


To Walk The Planet

by lurker_writes



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Ensemble Cast, F/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2018-08-16 17:21:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8110912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurker_writes/pseuds/lurker_writes
Summary: As they flee Midgar, AVALANCHE make an unwelcome and unsettling discovery. When they find themselves unable to agree on a solution to the issue, and each unwilling to explain their own reasoning, the tension threatens to tear their newly formed friendships apart. Sephiroth, after all, is a very big problem.





	1. Lifestream

**Author's Note:**

> And so it starts...
> 
> If you would like to see more writing, thoughts on writing, possible previews of future writing, the things I inevitably distract myself from writing with, and reblogs of cool stuff, you should go check out [my tumblr](https://lurkerwritessomestuff.tumblr.com/).
> 
> And lastly, a brief thank you to Ardwynna, whose kind response to a perfect stranger convinced me to lurk slightly less.

There was a ruined church in the slums of Midgar; the last place the Lifestream still coiled toward the surface amidst a vast dead scar on the surface of the world. Flowers grew there, in the poisoned ground. They were not a miracle, but a soft-petalled act of defiance. A very special young woman was trapped in the sickened wasteland; the last of the Planet’s chosen children. As long as she was there, covertly imprisoned by the humans that sought to use them for their own gain, Gaia would keep reaching. Gaia would keep calling.

It was what any good mother would do.

But Gaia… Gaia was dying. Gaia was being bled dry. The Planet had precious little strength left, and its child was in so much danger. She would need to be protected; and against the crisis that was coming, all the strength in the world may not be enough.

But there was still hope… perhaps. The Planet still held some strength within it.

‘ _Listen_ …’

Aerith’s fingers curled deep in the earth. That voice, even in her head, even after all these years, was a bittersweet pain lancing through her heart. Still… she smiled. “Mother.”

‘ _Listen_ ,’ the Planet repeated, a tiny voice against the distance clamor of life in the slums. ‘ _You will find each other before he finds himself. Don’t let him go. We hope…_ ’

Hope.

Aerith stared at her flowers, lost in thought.

 

* * *

 

A continent away, two men – boys, really – prepared to cross an ocean. Or rather, one prepared, while keeping up a constant stream of falsely cheerful chatter.

“Everything’s gonna be great, Cloud. I mean, first, we gotta get Aerith – but she’s the best! You’ll love her. Then, we’re gonna get the heck away from Midgar and ShinRa. We’re gonna get you fixed up, too. You’ll be better in no time!”

He paused in sorting out his very basic supply of food and medicine to gently ruffle the bright blond hair of the one stretched out next to him. The boy’s head nodded bonelessly along with the force of the motion.

“...Yeah,” Zack Fair said to himself, more subdued. “Gonna be great.” He refused to consider how many of his words were him lying through his teeth. So far, _nothing_ had been great. But if he couldn’t manage this, couldn’t at least let his girlfriend know he hadn’t abandoned her and help the kid he’d dragged into this mess… then what had he _ever_ been good for?

He stood and stretched, loudly, theatrically, fingers woven together high above his head. Then, he bent down and hooked his hands under Cloud’s arms. “Come on, buddy. Let’s get you ready to go.”

Cloud did not respond. He never did. His limbs dangled and his head lolled. His mind was a million miles away, conscious in flickers and flashes that left no memories but a lingering ache. He was barely aware of his body, and yet he felt so hungry, and everything…

Was…

Burning...

 

* * *

 

He was alive in hell, and it was full of the voices of the screaming dead. A hundred thousand thoughts born in other minds seeped into him and turned jagged. He was being torn apart from the inside. And always, there were the voices. The more he learned, the louder they grew.

The hatred of an entire people surrounded him with crushing force, and hissed a litany of his crimes. Crimes he had committed, crimes he had considered, crimes that he’d inherited by mere circumstance of birth. His… _mother’s_ … crimes…

His…

Mother…

The pressure lessened so abruptly it felt like a silent explosion. Silence. How long had it been since he’d known silence?

 _I am dying_ , he thought, and wondered if it was the happiest idea he’d ever had. Death… The Lifestream would not take him and he did not care. All he wanted to do was unravel. The planet was welcome to curse his name until the cool end of eternity, if only it would finally make good on its threat to rip his mind asunder and scatter it like so much debris.

In the confused haze of the Lifestream, everything taste-touch-sound- _green_ at once, he felt himself be gathered up by gentle touches, heard the unsteady thud of a heart. Peace…

After so long in the chaos of screaming voices and dragging hands, he felt like he was floating.

A voice. There was a voice. A single, solitary voice, pitched low and soothing. He had been so long with only pain and clamor that it sounded like the echo of an echo, or a faint, fading memory.

“Be everything we hoped you would, little soldier…”

The man…

Little…

Hope…

Soldier…

Did he know…?

 

* * *

 

Their journey was a constant struggle. At once, Zack despaired of Cloud ever waking, and was relieved that his trooper buddy couldn’t see how weak his hold on the situation was, and couldn’t escape the guilt and disgust those intermingled thoughts seeded in him. But… Cloud was all he had left. Maybe. That last letter… _Last letter_.

What would he do, if Aerith was really done with him?

“She won’t be,” he told Cloud with more determination than he felt.

Cloud tipped sideways a little bit. Maybe that was an answer.

“She won’t be, buddy,” he said again, quieter. “She’s gonna understand, when I tell her. If I tell her. No, I _gotta_ tell her. And she’s gonna understand, because Aerith is… the best…”

 

* * *

 

The silence persisted in the voice’s wake.

No screams, no crushing pressure. But… no peace, either. With nothing to fix his attention on, he became… unmoored. His body drifted in the vast green nothing, and his mind did too, further and further until thought only came in brief, brilliant bursts that he was barely capable of comprehending.

And in between...

Hours, days, weeks, months… He did not know. It might have been an eternity. There were black, blank patches in his memory; stretches of unconsciousness that could have been seconds or could have been ages.

Occasionally, while he slept – was he sleeping? – there came flickers of awareness too foreign to be dreams. Voices, sights, even smells. Zack, speaking to – no, it was too faint, he was too faint. But… _Zack_. The sky. Had it always been so blue? And the scents – smoke and mako, cold mountain air, the stench of Midgar’s underbelly. Blood? Pain? Confusion?

Yes. He was confused, in as much as he felt _anything_ . His mind was light and his body was heavy, or not _there_ or… in pieces? Why did he feel… spread… so… thin...?

 

* * *

 

In the wastes of Midgar, ShinRa unleashed a storm of bullets. Most ripped through fabric and flesh. One ripped through a handkerchief of seed pods, hastily shoved in a pocket.

The seeds would live on.

Not through any miracle or intervention of the Lifestream. It was simply the way of nature.

Bloodshed makes the soil rich.

 

* * *

 

In the ruined church, Aerith was overcome by a strange wave of vertigo. She felt a flash of – something, something familiar and so very sad. But as soon as it came, it was gone.

She didn’t expect an explanation. Her connection to the Lifestream was a faint, flickering thing. Even if it were – even if _she_ were – strong enough to understand, there would be no hope of it now.

What she could feel from the planet was roiling and churning, heaving with no discernable cause.

She clasped her hands over her heart and looked up to the sky she’d lied about fearing.

Something had happened. Something was coming.

The Lifestream thrummed and seethed.

 

* * *

 

Somewhere below Mideel, the surface of a glimmering mako spring was broken by ripples, then bubbles, then violent splashes.

Two feet beneath the surface, for the first time in years, Sephiroth drew a lungful – of mako.

He flailed. Each motion felt like his limbs were full of needles; but his lungs may as well have been filled with acid and every cell in his body was burning. Standing was a pointless proposition. He didn’t bother. A combination of frantic kicking and the uncoordinated pinwheeling of his arms brought him to the stony edge of the pool.

With the last of his strength – reserves he didn’t even know he’d possessed – he dragged himself clear of the mako and collapsed, face down, onto the rough stone floor of a cave. Everything stung. He thought he might be bleeding, from approximately everywhere. For some reason, the idea made him laugh; or attempt to, voicelessly. Laughing made him cough, which made him retch. His eyes failed to focus, but he still thought he saw a flow of pink and shimmering green oozing away from his face.

His limbs trembled. He was so dazed and feeble that the tiny motions felt like the waves of an earthquake beneath him. He retched again uselessly, and brought up nothing. That was as much movement as his body could find the will or the ability for. He let his eyes close. He spun with vertigo, or perhaps he felt the spinning of the planet. The ground seemed to heave again, as if it was trying to buck him off. His fingers slid across the cave floor, unable to find any purchase and too weak to do anything with it if they had.

Exhausted, he fell to nothingness once more—

—And awoke with an abrupt start, like a bomb had gone off in his head.

He pushed himself off the ground and sat up, for the first time since he clambered out of the Lifestream. The motion was like forcing knives through his limbs. He breathed through it. ...Breathing felt like knives in his lungs. Doggedly, he tried to breathe through that, too. The pain didn’t lessen, but he became accustomed to it, in degrees.

When agony was no longer causing sparks of white to shoot across his vision, he took in his surroundings. Of immediate concern was the amount of blood he was sitting in. Or… no, it _was_ blood, his blood, but it had… crystallized. It was still bright red, and as slick as polished stone, frozen in ripples. He tugged off a glove and ran his fingers over the undulating surface. Warm, and… aware? Like a summon materia; except it was his own mind echoing back at him.

Rougher green crystal curved around the edges of the red pool, barrels and crests of tiny waves which must have been captured as the Lifestream solidified in an instant. He leaned over and touched the pale, frothy edge of one little wave.

Pure energy shot up his arm like he’d grabbed a live wire.

He jerked back with a hiss. Panting, he looked around and took in the situation with new eyes. The blood, the border, the vague recollection of the Lifestream heaving him out... It was a tiny crystal dam, to prevent even his spilled, dead blood from touching that of the planet. Although, he realized in slow stages, his ‘blood’ was not blood, and though spilled, was not dead.

Absently, he rested his palm against the shimmering red crystal, and felt his own thoughts. He was... He struggled to remember all that Mother told him, once the mako enabled their minds to touch.

 _Mother_ …

He was alone, was what he was.

His mother had rejected him, let him free her and then let him fall. He’d only wanted to understand…

His fist clenched, and immediately unclenched at the lancing pain it caused, like something sharp was forcing itself through his flesh from the inside. He stared at his hand in horror. Something sharp _was_ forcing itself through his flesh from the inside. There were flat shards of mako crystal protruding, knife-like, from his palm; and the blood that welled up in the wounds glittered with fragments. The pain in his limbs, in his lungs, in his head… he was filled with crystal shrapnel, ripping his cells apart.

What a parting gift his mother and the planet left him with.

...He needed help. He needed…

He needed to get to Midgar.

He fell backward with a sigh, and winced as a thousand more shards embedded in his flesh made themselves known. He had to get up, get moving, but first he needed a moment with the hollow despair in his chest.

The moment stretched into several.

He laid there, monochrome against a backing of his own blood, like the planet’s most macabre cameo. Perhaps he could just stay here until he died or petrified, and not have to face the world; but… as the bleeding stopped, there came a gnawing hunger, not in his stomach but in his bones.

He knew this craving, though it had been years.

Mako.

Mako, always mako.

...He had to get to Midgar.

He heaved himself up.  For the first time in his life, he felt all of his weight dragging him down. He’d carried expectations. He’d carried resentment. He could carry himself, no matter how hurt or hungry.

He squared his shoulders and pushed his hair out of his face. Midgar. It was going to be a very long walk.


	2. The Man in Black

Halfway to Kalm, they saw the man in black. Aerith noticed him first, even before Red’s keen eye could find him. She couldn’t help _but_ notice him, not when the planet’s voice became a cacophony of hissing whispers with his appearance.

While Cloud and Barret continued their territorial bickering over who would lead, and Tifa played haggard referee, Aerith watched the cloaked stranger stumble sideways into a ditch and clamber out again, a bit more muddy. Red turned his attention that way as well. Although Aerith hadn’t heard anything but the planet’s agitation, she supposed there must have been some sort of splash to catch his ear. Their distraction finally distracted Cloud and Barret, which did not so much distract Tifa as free her to pay attention.

As if he now sensed their attention, the cloaked man paused… but only briefly, before skirting a wide half-circle around them that took him all the way off the path. One of his hands darted out from his muddied mantle to tug his hood down further over his face. Aerith thought she saw a flash of silver in the dim sunlight.

Barret turned away with a snort, and made an abortive attempt to cuff Cloud upside the head. “You damn SOLDIER fool, even the freaks goin’ out their way to avoid us now. Let’s jus’ _go_.”

As soon as Barret said ‘SOLDIER’, waves of prickles travelled up and down Aerith’s spine. Nervously, she glanced over her shoulder at the stranger—

—And found him staring right back, with grey hair slipping free of his hood and eyes that, in its shadow, glowed not mako blue but luminescent pale green.

Tifa actually hissed. Cloud stumbled. Aerith heard his feet tangle with themselves. It was all the warning she got, before he shoved her out of his way and to the ground. She hit the dirt with a sharp, bit off cry of surprise. He didn’t even look down as he leapt over her and kept running, like a slum hound that scented prey.

The man in black froze for the space of a single heartbeat. Then he, too, sprang into action. He charged sideways, away from both Cloud and Midgar. Cloud was fast, but the other man was faster by a considerable margin. Aerith thought he might actually get away.

For some reason… she really wanted him to.

Tifa must have agreed with her, at least about the man’s odds of escape. She clenched her fists so hard that Aerith could hear the fittings of her studded gloves creak, and then she too took off in a mad dash.

“ _Sephiroth!_ ” she shrieked.

Right then, Aerith’s heart might have stopped in her chest.

Over her head, Barret’s machine gun blazed to life.

She may as well have been seven years old again, watching her mother die in the dirt, or fifteen, trapped and excluded so long she’d forgotten how honesty and happiness felt. All she could do was clutch her hands over her ears and wish that it would stop. All of it. Barret… Barret was going to hit Cloud or Tifa. Or Sephiroth was going to… All that blood in the labs, the dead president… At any moment, he could turn around and—

He didn’t turn around. He pitched forward and fell.

The voices of the planet coalesced into one repeating phrase: _not safe help_ . _Not safe help not safe help not safe help notsafehelpnotsafehelpnotsafe_.

Cloud raised his sword – the Buster Sword, _Zack’s sword_ – over his head.

Aerith hurled herself off the ground and ran. Whatever was about to happen, she wasn’t going to sit in the dirt, scared and useless.

When she was a fourth of the way there, Sephiroth caught the blade of the Buster Sword between his hands and shoved it back. Cloud slid backwards with a bellow of frustration. They struggled, Sephiroth with one hand on the flat of the blade and one hand on the grip, between Cloud’s. With his hands occupied, Tifa rained blows upon his back.

Aerith tightened her grip on her staff. There was something about this that made no _sense_. Maybe it didn’t matter. She touched a finger to her slotted materia, readying a spell.

Halfway there, and Tifa kneed Sephiroth in the side so hard that Aerith heard his surprised grunt even over the distance. He shoved the Buster Sword up, using his height to try and tear it out of Cloud’s reach.

Her mind searched for a trick, some disaster she could prevent; but all she found was the nagging uncertainty: why would the deadliest SOLDIER the planet had ever seen wrestle over a sword? He was _fighting back_ , yes, but why wasn’t he actually _attacking?_

A third of the distance still left; Tifa slammed her elbow down onto Sephiroth’s right thigh. His leg crumpled underneath him. Cloud ripped his sword free. For one ludicrous, terrible moment, Aerith’s mind overlaid Sephiroth, kneeling in the dirt and teeth clenched, with Zack, sitting on the floor of her church and sobbing because his mentor was _dead_ and he didn’t want any of this. Why?

Cloud swung the Buster Sword down with all his strength. Sephiroth rolled to the side. He kicked Tifa’s leg out from under her, mid-motion. She tumbled, but popped back up furious. The Buster Sword embedded itself deep into the ground, missing not just Sephiroth but also Tifa by a mere hands-width of a margin.

Zack’s voice was suddenly clear in Aerith’s mind, not from the Lifestream but from memory, sad and broken and furious: ‘ _—and I feel guilty for being so mad at him; they were friends, I can’t blame a guy for refusing to kill his friends! But Angeal was my—I didn’t want to, either, I—Everything’s wrong now._ ’

It _was_ all wrong. Maybe… Maybe if what had happened in ShinRa was really Sephiroth – and they only really had a sword and the word of a coward to go on –  maybe he needed to die; but crouched in the dirt without a weapon, with his friend’s sword? It was cruel. It was _too_ cruel. She wasn’t sure she could stomach it.

“Cloud!” she panted, trying to ignore the stitch in her side. She wasn’t a SOLDIER, or a martial artist, or anything special. She was just a slum girl who sold flowers. “Cloud, wait! Don’t—"

Cloud’s head jerked in her direction. For just a moment, his face – sweet, boyish, and sick – was unrecognizable with fury, which melted into confusion and betrayal as his eyes caught hers. He was in the midst of hefting the Buster Sword up again and behind his back, both hands on the grip and his shoulders strained and tight against its weight. That moment of distraction – a SOLDIER should have known. A SOLDIER could end a life in less.

Sephiroth rocketed up so fast that Aerith could barely track the movement. In the middle of the confused blur, she did make out his fist slamming into Cloud’s stomach and throwing him off his feet. When the confusion ended, Cloud was flat on his back in the dirt, sword pinned under him, with Sephiroth’s boot pressed to his throat.

Tifa staggered backward with a low moan of distress. She shook her head slowly, as if it would somehow change what she saw.

Sephiroth stared down at Cloud, his eyes icy and the corners of his mouth tight with distaste. Now that she was closer, Aerith could see that he looked to be in bad shape – almost as bad as Cloud, who slightly resembled the walking dead. His cheekbones were sharp, and the hollows under them were deep. The skin around his eyes was not merely darkened, but had a sallow, greenish cast to it.

He pressed his boot down harder for a moment – Aerith’s breath caught in her throat – and then slid it to Cloud’s collarbones with a disappointed sigh. He opened his mouth; and then, bafflingly, closed it again. A deep breath, pursed lips… Another, even deeper sigh.

“Where is Zack, Strife?” he asked in a low voice so creaky with disuse that Aerith’s mind struggled briefly to connect it to the image of ShinRa’s vaunted hero.

And then she realized what he’d asked. Both of her hands flew to her mouth. Her staff clattered at her feet. She dropped to the ground after it, sweating with nerves and fear.

Cloud was clearly, in equal measure, outraged and confused. He let go of the Buster Sword’s hilt to wrap both hands around Sephiroth’s ankle and shove. “What the hell are you talking about?” he grunted.

Very slowly, Sephiroth tilted his head. He studied Cloud like he was some sort of specimen. “Where. Is—"

A sound that was half roar, half sob tore its way from somewhere deep in Tifa’s chest. She launched herself at Sephiroth and slammed him to the ground in a whirlwind of feet and fists. Aerith felt a peculiar chill settle over her – it was almost as if… as if she didn’t want him to ask.

They scuffled and rolled on the ground, away from Cloud. It was absurd, more like two children in a schoolyard brawl than two trained fighters. Except, she realized with a jolt, they were leaving great smears of blood all over the ground. With less concern than she thought was entirely appropriate, Aerith wondered if Tifa had been hurt somehow. She started to call up the energy to heal her. They were—they were friends, even if…

Cloud dragged himself up, and the Buster Sword with him. For just an instant, the sword provided a dark backdrop to see the blood against. It was evaporating shimmering green light, like the heat waves off metal sheeting roofs in a Midgar summer. It was full of mako; so loaded with it that the effect was visible. It had to be a SOLDIER’s. The way he fell over… It had to be Sephiroth’s.

Somehow, Cloud got his boot into the fray and stomped down on Sephiroth’s right thigh. Sephiroth arched off the ground, teeth clenched. The motion only created an opening for Cloud to rest the point of the Buster Sword against his neck, in a feat of brutal turnabout.

Tifa struggled to her knees, breathing hard. Her posture was exhausted, knuckles dragging and shoulders slumped, but her expression was triumphant.

Aerith’s stomach turned.

Sephiroth’s gaze slid over all of them, slow and deliberate and unreadable. He stared at Cloud the longest, while Cloud’s arms trembled and the Buster Sword left a seismograph of raised pink welts across his neck.

Aerith struggled to find her voice. The planet’s unease turned in coils within her. Maybe… Maybe this was justice, but she didn’t want to be part of it. Brawls and mob justice… Plate or no, apparently people were all just the same.

Sephiroth’s eyes slid closed and he fell limp. He laughed mirthlessly; a scratchy, breathless noise that sounded like it had clawed its way out of him. “What’s wrong, Cloud? Is it too difficult, to look a man in the face when you murder him?”

“It didn’t give you any trouble,” Tifa snarled. “After what you did, don’t dare talk about _murder!_ ”

“...Right,” Aerith agreed shakily. Or, well… She was sure she didn’t agree with this at all. She was also sure that survival meant never being Different. “All those people. The president.”

Sephiroth’s attention snapped to her so quickly that he drew a bead of his own blood against the swordpoint. “The _president?_ ”

Cloud pressed harder, and widened the cut some. “Don’t play games, we’re not stupid.”

Sephiroth slid his eyes sideways toward Cloud, his expression clearly conveying his opinion on _that_ statement. “The president,” he repeated flatly.

Whatever Cloud said next was inaudible, over Barret’s raised exclamation of, “Well, I don’t _care_ , and they ain’t gonna like it, no matter what your damned _nose_ says.”

Very reluctantly, Cloud turned his attention to Barret. A moment later, Aerith followed suit. He was stomping over to them, running twitchy fingers over the surface of his gun prosthetic. Red padded along beside him, tail whipping and head lowered.

“Before this goes any further…” How could Red be so calm, in a situation like this? Although, Red was pretty calm after trying to tear Hojo’s throat out, too. “I thought you should know that his trail is heading toward Midgar.”

“So?” Cloud snapped.

Red walked right up to Sephiroth, and pressed his nose to the man’s hair. He snuffled a few times, and then sat back on his haunches. His ears swivelled back. Aerith was still learning to read his body language, but she thought he looked… confused, maybe?

“He wasn’t in Midgar. His scent wasn’t there, and I can’t smell the city on him. So, how could he have killed anyone in the ShinRa building tonight?”

“Yes,” Sephiroth muttered, almost as if he was speaking to himself. “How could that happen?”

Aerith glanced around at everyone. Barret had his arms crossed, and was glaring down at Sephiroth even though his chin was turned away, like he didn’t actually want to look. Red was as still as a statue, besides the occasional flick of an ear. Tifa looked… shaken, like she didn’t know what to think. Cloud, though…

Aerith groped blindly until her fingers finally closed around her staff.

Cloud rocked back on his heels. She could see the muscles in his arms flex. He drew the Buster Sword back a few inches.

“You know what?” he asked, his voice a low, flat growl. “I don’t care.” And he thrust the sword downward.

At the same time, Sephiroth’s left leg swung up with all the force of a trebuchet. Cloud flipped over his head and landed several feet away, skidding across the wasteland grit. Sephiroth rolled to a crouch and spun around in one fluid movement. There was a deep cut on his chest, seeping more phosphorescent blood. And his face…

For years, Tseng had used ShinRa’s shining SOLDIER hero as a bogeyman to try and scare her into staying ‘safe’ and compliant in the slums. She’d never believed him, not when she was young, and not after she met Zack and listened to his silly complaints about a man who was ‘kinda weird’ and ‘ _never_ does his work Aerith, you have no idea.’

As it turned out, Tseng’s terrifying hunter did exist, and he was about to tear Cloud to shreds.

She jumped to her feet and threw herself between them, heels planted deep and arms held wide. She didn’t know what else to do. “Stop! We don’t understand _anything_ right now! Don’t you think,” she panted, “don’t you think knowing what’s going on might be important?”

Behind her, she heard Cloud struggling to his feet. She hoped that putting her back to him would calm him down some, force him to regain some sort of composure.

Sephiroth certainly had.

In front of her, he was examining the wound on his chest. He actually poked a finger into it and then rubbed the blood against his thumb. He seemed unbothered, but it made her wince in sympathy. It was hard to tell under his mantle – which actually looked like it had started life as some sort of canvas tarp – but from the tilt of his shoulders, she thought he might be putting all his weight on his left leg. His eyes flicked to Cloud over her shoulder and his lips curled in distaste. She heard Cloud’s responding scoff of disgust.

But he ignored Cloud and looked back to _her_ ; hopelessly, stupidly between them like she could stop two charging behemoths. He studied her, spent so long taking in details that she felt the urge to squirm. And then, unexpectedly…

“Very well,” he said in a perfectly calm, if still scratchy, voice. “I surrender.”

Aerith’s fingers fumbled on her staff. For once, she didn’t feel any shame over it – everyone else was having the same issue. The whole fight was frozen by a deep, collective shock.

“I—you— _what?_ ” Aerith managed, despite lungs that were refusing to hold air.

Sephiroth clasped his hands behind his back. His awkwardly lopsided posture, so far from the cool, military precision of the gesture, made it evident that, yes, he _was_ leaning all his weight onto one leg.

“I surrender, he repeated. Now she was close enough to see how unnaturally bright his eyes were – brighter than Zack’s, brighter than Cloud’s – and how utterly inhuman. And… how intensely focused they were – he was – on her and her alone.

“Great,” Cloud growled behind her. “We aren’t taking prisoners.”

Sephiroth’s slit pupils grew full and round, a stark eclipse on his pale irises. A chill forced its way up Aerith’s spine. She’d seen an old alley cat’s do that, once, right before it grabbed a small monster by the throat and shook the life out of it. She was rooted in place, a small scurrying thing frozen in a predator’s gaze. That moment of stillness dilated as well, her eyes on his and his eyes on nothing.

And then, pandemonium.

With no warning, Aerith was yanked off of her feet. Any comprehension she had at all of the situation fizzled out into a bewildered haze. One moment, she was staring at Sephiroth; the next, her waist was in a vice and she was being whipped around with all the force of a hurricane.

There was a lot of screaming, everyone’s voices at once. It was probably something to be worried about, but she couldn’t quite get her mind to connect back to her body. An enormous impact cut through the din – _thunk!_ – and left a ringing tone like a muffled bell in its wake.

Her feet returned to the ground. Her mind was still struggling to catch up from back when they left it. She stumbled on shaky legs. It was so quiet, all she heard was her quavering, adrenaline-flavored exhale.

As if she’d breathed sound back into the world, auditory chaos erupted once more.

“Cloud!” Tifa shrieked.

“—lost your _goddamn mind?!_ ” Barret demanded, over a low animal growl.

Aerith blinked rapidly. She looked up from the ground – the motion upset her balance, and her wobbly legs folded inward underneath her until her knees knocked together. The first thing she saw was Sephiroth. Actually, the _only_ thing she saw was Sephiroth, less than an arm’s reach away. The broad wall of his back hid everyone else from her view. The rigid line of his shoulder was so close and so high, that looking up at it sent her still dizzy mind spinning again with vertigo.

“—move quickly enough.” His deep voice was still controlled, but rough with undertones of aggression and mockery. “A SOLDIER would know.”

With a deep breath to calm her involuntary trembling, Aerith peered around his side.

The first thing she saw was Cloud, both his hands stretched out in front of him, white-knuckled around the Buster Sword’s hilt. His face, too, was white – the sickly color of spoiled milk, and slick with patches of nervous sweat.

“Could you have lived with that, I wonder?” Sephiroth continued. Something about the weight he settled on those words – or the lack of it, accusatory but also unconcerned – set her hair standing on end.

She took another shaky sidestep around him, and revealed the rest of the Buster Sword, plunged deep into the ground… and bisecting a long, shallow furrow in the dirt. She stared at it, brows drawn in confusion, no idea where it came from. Mouth dry, she looked down at her boots.

...Her _boots_.

It was an ugly flash of understanding.

That whirlwind of motion – it was Sephiroth, dragging her out of the way. If he hadn’t, if he’d left her to dodge by herself… There was the sword, buried right where she’d stood.

She looked up again, to meet Cloud’s eyes – or she _tried_ to. He would look anywhere but at her. She was shaking. _He_ was shaking.

“Cloud," Tifa said, breathless and wavering and fearful. “Cloud, I think maybe we should—"

“Get your _fucking temper under control, mebbe_ ?!” Barret finished for her, in a mighty crescendo of hypocrisy. “The _hell_ you think you’re doin’?!”

“...I…” Cloud’s voice was a tiny, choked gasp. He was still clutching the hilt of his – no, of _Zack’s_ sword. It was Zack’s, she thought in burst of sudden anger. She didn’t know how Cloud got it, but she couldn’t believe what he was using it for.

Something cold nudged against Aerith’s palm, and she jumped. It was Red, pressing his nose into her hand. She curled her fingers into his mane, and he didn’t complain at all.

“I thought you’d move…” Cloud’s voice was still tiny, hollowed out with fear. “I didn’t mean to – I… I thought you’d move.”

“It – I _know_ it was an accident,” Tifa pleaded, which would have been more effective if she hadn’t sounded like she was trying to convince herself, too. “He’s just...”

Aerith ground the toe of her boot into the gritty earth. She stared at it, so she didn’t have to look at anyone else. “I…” She shifted on her feet. She liked – wanted desperately to like – Cloud, but there was the sword in the dirt between them. He'd cared more about his revenge than about her, if only for a moment.

“Don’t agree to please them,” Sephiroth told her, his low voice surprisingly intense.

Aerith took a deep breath to brace herself, and stared him in the face. “Why are you even still _here?_ ” she asked. They’d tried to kill him, for Gaia’s sake, and she didn’t think anything could stop violence from erupting again.

He stared back, silent, his eyes narrowed. He’d gone a very unhealthy shade of pale, she realized, with paste grey undertones. His posture was even more lopsided – on anyone else, she would have called it slumped, but he maintained a certain dignity of bearing. How far would he have made it, if he ran? Far enough for Tifa and Cloud to fall on him like wolves again? Far enough to collapse in the Midgar slums?

“For nothing, clearly.” He pulled his filthy cloak about him with an incongruent sense of regality. “Strife, Lockhart. It hasn’t been a pleasure.”

“You are _not_ walking away from this!” Cloud growled. He tugged the Buster Sword free of the ground. It made an awful screeching sound where it scraped against rocks.

Another awful sound flashed solely through Aerith’s head – the way it would scrape when being pulled against bone. ‘ _notsafehelp_ ,’ the planet uselessly echoed in her mind. She had no idea who she was supposed to be helping. Cloud, Tifa, herself, Sephiroth?

But, she realized with a burst of frustration, she knew she was going to _try_.

“Wait!” Her voice came out as a sharp, embarrassing yelp. “You can’t leave! You… You surrendered to me. That means you’re my prisoner, right?”

“Aerith, _what?_ ” Cloud and Tifa both demanded.

“...Aerith,” Sephiroth said – and unlike them, said it _correctly_ without ever hearing it, the _th_ a breathy sound, tongue behind his teeth. “Am I? Are you _asking_ me, or capturing me?”

Of course. Of course, one didn’t _ask_ to take prisoners. She had to act with authority. The problem was, Aerith didn’t _feel_ like any sort of authority. “I am capturing you. You surrendered, so you are my prisoner, and I forbid you to leave.”

Hopefully, putting herself metaphorically between them was safer than doing so physically.

“Very well,” Sephiroth agreed. “I am _your_ prisoner.”

He did it with so little fuss, she immediately wondered what she got herself into.

Barret made a noise, half exhale and half whistle. “So that’s how it is, ShinRa.”

Sephiroth barely deigned to acknowledge him, a mere flick of his eyes. “Her bravery just bought your lives. Yes, _that_ is ‘how it is’.”

Cloud and Tifa were both silent. Aerith looked at Barret, and Barret looked at her, and they both looked back at them, waiting. Silence. No objection at all.

With a curl of unease in her stomach, Aerith realised they agreed – he _could_ have killed them, _would_ kill them, in their minds. Slowly, she lowered the end of her staff to the ground between her feet, and tried to pretend she wasn’t leaning heavily on it. “I would just like to understand this situation without any more bloodshed. But I think I we will all need to cooperate, and you’ve made my friends very nervous—"

Outside of her field of view, Red snorted.

“Um. Nervous. And I think we would all appreciate it if you assumed a, uh. Less threatening position.”

Sephiroth did not snort, but she did see the corner of his smirk through his hair. Only then did Aerith realize she was talking like a Turk.

“I’ve surrendered to you,” he said. “That means my safety is your responsibility.”

And then – Aerith’s heart stuttered several beats at the enormity of the moment – he slowly raised his hands and folded his shredded leg beneath him, so he sunk in one smooth motion down onto one knee before her. The undefeatable SOLDIER. The Scourge of Wutai. On his knees, deferring to her.

When were all these SOLDIERs going to realize, she was nothing? She was just trouble…

“You didn’t kill the president…”

He gave a tiny shake of his head that set his bangs swaying.

“Do they have another credible reason to think you’re a threat to us?”

Cloud stepped forward to object, but Sephiroth raised his chin in a sharp jerk. He hesitated there for a few breaths before he dropped it again, equally abruptly.

“Alright. Alright. Then I think we should, um…”

Red padded to her side with a tattered satchel hanging from his jaws. He dropped it at her feet and nudged it to her, “This was in the ditch. He must have dropped it.”

Aerith crouched down to pick it up. The end of a rope hung out of one battered, mudstained side. She pulled at it, and found a neatly tied coil. She wasn’t sure, but from how fat it was and the heft of it in her hand, she thought it must be a very long rope. Unlike the bag it was carried in, it was relatively clean. She slung the strap of the satchel over her shoulder. A few loose items rattled around within it.

“Alright,” she repeated, more certain this time. “I’m going to bind your hands. Is that okay?”

Sephiroth sighed, but held his hands out in front of him with open, upturned palms. She circled him warily, her hands clenched around the twist of rope, now dampening rapidly with sweat.

Tifa stepped forward, her own hands outstretched. “Here, let me. I know how to tie a prisoner.”

Aerith unconsciously clutched the rope closer to her chest.

“I’ll do it right!” Tifa snapped. “If you understood even _half_ of what this monster did—"

“I wonder if _you_ understand even half of what I did,” Sephiroth muttered, almost to himself. Before Tifa could kick him in retaliation, he glanced off in the direction of Midgar. “If you must, then quickly.”

Tifa pulled the rope out of Aerith’s slick grip, and seized one of Sephiroth’s wrists. Her attempt to twist his arm behind his back halted as abruptly as she did. Her strength, which Aerith had found astounding, was not remotely capable of overpowering his. Her arms shook with effort. He was as immobile as stone.

He stared, unblinking, at Aerith.

“...Yes,” Aerith said. “Let her.”

His resistance disappeared so suddenly that Tifa staggered back, with his arm no longer bearing all the weight she was leaning on it. Tifa forced back one arm, and then the other. She wrapped them together to well above the elbow, until they were forced straight and his shoulders strained backward.

“Stand,” she ordered.

Sephiroth wobbled about half a foot up, before collapsing back into the dirt. He tilted his head, as he couldn’t shrug.

Tifa let out a low growl of disgust. “Cloud, get him up.”

Aerith, though, could see his downcast eyes in his perfectly impassive face, and she just knew – he could have stood. Tifa yanked the rope and yanked his shoulders so hard the leather of his coat creaked. Aerith decided not to mention it.

Although he’d recovered somewhat, Cloud still looked quite dazed – and he still wouldn’t fully look at Aerith. He reached out and grabbed the straps crossing Sephiroth’s chest. Immediately, he stumbled back, trembling. His breath came in a series of short, sharp gasps.

Tifa jerked on the rope, and Sephiroth rocked back. His eyes were narrowed; not in triumph but in confusion. His lips formed a round shape. Aerith recognized it after a moment: _how?_

Cloud shook his head briskly and squared his shoulders. “I’m fine,” he grunted. “Guess I just can’t stand touching trash.”

He stepped forward again, and this time hooked his hands under Sephiroth’s arms. Despite the difference in their heights, he did indeed succeed at hauling the man to his feet – well, foot. Sephiroth’s injured leg twisted beneath him, not at all helped by Cloud’s aggression.

“I hope you realize I’ll need to walk on that,” he said, in what passed as a sneer from his lips.

Aerith felt the weight of his earlier words – _my safety is your responsibility_ – and threw a cure onto him before anyone could object.

Tifa and Cloud did object, with sighs carrying heavy loads of disapproval. But she met Barret’s eyes across from her, and thought she saw _something_ in them. So Cloud had a score to settle with Sephiroth, whatever that meant. It was precious little to go on, being stretched to justify an awful lot.

Without further comment, Tifa continued her work. She threaded the rope back up through the gap between his arms and around several times, until she’d crosswise-wrapped the bindings. A moment’s hesitation, and then she grabbed a handful of his canvas tarp cloak and tore it off his shoulders.

And – there he was. The metal shoulder guards, the open coat, the impossible features. The grainy news footage was no match, Aerith thought, and even the recruitment posters undersold him. He had… a force of presence, that made him _feel_ powerful and in control, even now.

But… there were differences from the man in the posters. The dark circles under his eyes and the hollows in his cheeks, yes; but also dirt on the ends of his hair, a rising bruise along his jawline… And a neat-edged slice that nearly bisected his coat along his right side. Aerith reached for another cure before she realized that the skin she could see through the hole was undamaged and clear of blood.

 _Well of course_ , she chided herself. If that had happened with him wearing it, it would surely have killed him!

Cloud was staring at the rend as well, his confused face framing horror-struck eyes. His lips moved soundlessly. His throat convulsed, once, twice. He stepped gingerly away, swinging his head slowly side-to-side in disbelief.

He let out a deep, wavering exhale. “You _really_ aren’t human,” he said roughly, staring Sephiroth in the face.

Sephiroth only tilted his head, apparently unmoved by the dire insult. “Hm. But how did _you_ come to that conclusion?” he mused.

“I don’t know what hole you’ve been in, that you decided to come crawling out of _now_ , but you need to stop talking.” Tifa hissed through her teeth, and went back to working on the rope. She shuddered as she leaned in to loop the rope around his waist, so that his bound arms were in turn bound to his torso.

Bending would be impossible, tied like that.

“No one here,” she continued, pulling a knot with surprising ferocity, “deserves your sick mind games.”

Sephiroth only had one answer for that, and it made Aerith’s gut twist: “Where. Is. Zack. Fair?”

Tifa yanked him back so he arched like a drawn bow. “I don’t _care_ ,” she spat with venom Aerith wouldn’t have thought her capable of. “I don’t care! You’re a murderer and he was a liar and I don’t care _what_ happens to ShinRa’s pet monsters as long as they’re put down!”

Aerith… couldn’t breathe. Her blood rushed in her ears. _Was a liar_. She knew him, and she knew Cloud, and now Cloud had his sword with no idea where it came from – and Tifa only wanted SOLDIERs dead.

Who… who had she gotten herself caught up with? ...Maybe she _should_ have listened to Tseng. About _everything_.

Sephiroth stared at the Buster Sword, now returned to Cloud’s back, and said nothing. His legs trembled with the strain of holding the position he was forced into. His face was an unreadable mask.

Barret stepped up to him with heavy, graceless feet. He laid his one good hand across Sephiroth’s shoulder and pulled him back upright. “Tifa,” he said, in a gentle, prodding tone. “We gotta move.”

Tifa gasped for breath and then nodded. Still shaking with anger, she dropped to her knees and began on a complicated hobble.

“You a murderer?” Barret asked Sephiroth, low and much less gentle, though surprisingly not less calm.

Sephiroth blinked. His eyes flicked over Barret’s face, searching for something. “I fought for something I believed in. People died. That will always be murder, to the ones who disagree.”

Barret clucked his tongue. “ShinRa ain’t worth believin’ in.”

He turned away then. He didn’t see the flash of bitterness, or the tiny shake of Sephiroth’s head.

But Aerith did. No. No one here believed in ShinRa.

Despite the tension simmering in the air, all of the arguments fell silent. Perhaps everyone felt that they’d lingered too long, and avoiding the spectre of ShinRa was more important than haranguing an enemy they already – possibly – had under control.

Aerith wondered.

Cloud began bouncing on his heels as Tifa tied _yet another_ knot. Now not only were Sephiroth’s arms bound together, and to his body, but the same length of rope rucked up the back of his coat where it continued down to loop around his knees. There was a span about as long as Aerith’s forearm between them – barely enough to walk, never mind running. And _that_ continued on to be tied around his ankles with about a shoulder’s-width of slack.

And there was still about seven feet of rope left trailing.

“I need a knife,” Tifa said.

No one had a knife. Well, Sephiroth’s _satchel_ didn’t have a knife. Sephiroth’s pockets _may_ have had a knife, but they didn’t have anyone willing to look in them.

Eventually, Tifa braced the end of the Buster Sword, and sawed the rope off on it. She tied a fat knot into the center of the new length and bounced it up and down in her hands. She looked… conflicted.

Sephiroth followed it with his eyes. “Truly?”

Tifa caught the rope in one tight fist. “You know what? Yes. There is nothing you have to say that I’m interested in hearing.”

Sephiroth’s attention focused, laser-like, onto Cloud. His bright eyes narrowed, and his lip curled. It looked less like a sneer and more like… like he was scenting him. “ _Nothing_ I have to say? I doubt that. In fact—"

Cloud jerked forward. Tifa caught him with a hand on his chest, and then both hands as quickly as she could; he almost looked like he was swooning. “Cloud! Are you hurt? What’s wrong? What happened?”

But Cloud had been fine moments ago – or what passed for fine, on Cloud; and Aerith knew SOLDIERs could take an awful lot of punishment. He was the second one to fall through her roof and walk away flirting.

...Sephiroth was staring at Cloud with such predatory intensity that it made _her_ hair stand on end. He furrowed his brows, just the tiniest shift on his face. Cloud shuddered.

“What happened?” Sephiroth asked, a perfect mirror of Tifa’s tone and inflection in his much deeper timbre.

And Cloud… Cloud mouthed the words.

Tifa pushed him back against Barret.

Barret had to wrap an arm around his waist to catch him before he crumpled. “Hey, you—"

Cloud shook his head vigorously.

Barret jerked his chin up with a sour expression, to avoid getting a mouthful of blond hair.

“I’m fine,” Cloud grunted…

...and Sephiroth mouthed the words in perfect time with him. Tifa and Barret’s attention was on Cloud, Red was at the wrong angle. Aerith might have been the only one to see it.

“Strife,” he added out loud, “you are a disaster.”

Tifa spun around so quickly her hair whipped all of them. “I’m done with you.” She held the rope out taught in front of Sephiroth’s face and Aerith _finally_ realized what she intended.

Sephiroth did not fight her. He leaned down and bit the gag with exaggerated care. The rope pulled the corners of his mouth back in a cruel sneer. Aerith was briefly amazed that he’d done it without any sort of commentary – and then his tongue cupped the bottom of the knot and dragged it deeper into his mouth, while the rest of his expression remained superior and unruffled. Really, that was the most eloquent commentary she could imagine him making on how trivial he found these proceedings. _‘Oh very well, Miss Lockhart; but you must know that I find your attempts at humiliating me sloppy and substandard.’_

Aerith pressed a hand to her face to try and cover her snort. Now really wasn’t the time, which naturally meant that _everything_ started to take on an edge of bitter humor.

Cloud just stared at him with tired, dead eyes. “I hope you get rope burn _on your face_ ,” he sighed.

Sephiroth _smiled_. The way his mouth was pulled by the rope rendered the expression sinister; or perhaps, Aerith amended, even more sinister. He tilted his head and let his hair fall into his face.

Cloud clenched his jaw. He turned away, but so slowly the action looked like a struggle. “We should go.”

“Wait!” Aerith tripped forward over her own feet. “We can’t just walk around like this. He, um. He is a little eye catching and suspicious, don’t you think?”

Barret sighed explosively. “Are you shi—! First we gotta take him, now we gotta wait! Girl, you gotta get yo’ head on straight. We ain’t got time for—”

“Barret, I _know_ ,” she barked. “I know.” She let her voice fall softer. She liked Barret, she didn’t want to argue with him too. “I know a thing or two about running from ShinRa too, remember?” She held her hands up and gestured to Sephiroth, as if she were presenting him on stage. He looked like he’d stepped out of a Wutai propaganda poster. “This is not low profile, buddy.”

Barret stared at Sephiroth. Aerith could see him realizing for the first time who they had, and what they’d done to him. He ran his hand tiredly over his face, and muffled completely humorless chuckles. “Fuck…” he breathed.

Cloud was rubbing his hands like he was massaging a chill out of them. He and Tifa shared a look, communicating something silently between themselves. “Don’t worry. If ShinRa catches up to us, I say we just throw them a present and keep running. Whoever wins that fight, I’m happy.”

“Just let me…” Aerith sighed. She approached Sephiroth warily. Now that he was (theoretically) restrained, the air of danger around him intensified instead of lessened. She had the feeling that, even though he’d let this happen, it would be a bad idea to make any sudden movements.

His eyes tracked her as far as they could.

She considered the problem for a moment, and then pulled the black ribbon from around her neck. Carefully – so carefully – she gathered up his hair about halfway down the length. His head jerked at the first touch, but the motion must have pulled on his strained neck and shoulders, as he immediately returned to unnatural stillness. She could feel little tangles under her fingers. Tangles and… she paused, to pull out a twig. He shivered, a tiny movement and a hitch in his breath. She tied the ribbon as quickly as she could, wrapped several times around his silver hair in sloppy criss-crosses.

“Okay.” She looked up and held out her hand. “Tifa, could you give me his cloak?”

Tifa did, with a little crease of… displeasure? Concern? Tension. A little crease of tension between her brows.

Aerith held it in both hands and shook it out. Now she just had to – hm. “Mr. SOLDIER, could you… bend down a bit?” she asked, saccharine and cajoling.

He tilted his head, but that was it.

Aerith clutched her hands tight around the rough canvas. She stepped around until she could–well, no, she couldn’t look him in the face. She craned her neck up and glared. “Work with me, here.”

Barret reached out for the cloak. He was certainly tall enough to drape it back around Sephiroth’s shoulders. Aerith pulled it close to her chest. She just felt like… she had to do this herself.

A loud scuff made her jump. Sephiroth slid his feet on the gritty ground, as far apart as they’d go. Tethered as he was, he executed more of an ungainly curtsey than a bow. Still, he brought his shoulders low enough for her to reach without hopping.

Even beyond the mako, his eyes were bright with amusement.

Aerith swung his stupid tarp around his shoulders and pulled it straight. There was a snapped-off cord dangling from a grommet. She looped it through another on the opposite side and knotted the end. Satisfied, she pulled the very rudimentary hood up over his head.

Coat, hidden. Armor, hidden. If only there was something she could do about… those… eyes.

They burned under the shadow of his hood. She turned abruptly away and stumbled. Only Barret’s quick catch kept her from hitting the ground yet again today.

“I think that’s as normal as this is getting,” she said, brushing off her skirt to try and hide the strange squirming in her gut. “So let’s go.”

Cloud worked a shudder out of his shoulders, and readjusted the Buster Sword’s weight. “Yeah. _You_ , up front where we can see you.”

Despite the gag, Sephiroth managed to scoff with derision. Still, he walked.

Tifa fell into step behind him, with Barret following. Red, who’d been very quiet this whole time, fixed her with a searching, one-eyed look before he, too, followed. Cloud hung awkwardly back.

“Aerith, I’m.” His mako-blue eyes roamed over the dirt on her dress, a scrape on her palm. He practically vibrated with guilt. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean—"

“I know you didn’t,” she cut him off. She knew he didn’t, and she knew he was. That was what made this complicated. “But Cloud… You really have to think things through,” she sighed.

It was just another thing they had in common.

 

* * *

 

After the extremely hectic events of the last few days, even the excitement of leaving Midgar for the first time couldn’t quite draw Aerith out of the stupor she fell into. She trailed along at the back of the group, with only Red behind her. The planet was so _loud_ out here, and this was still within the scar of the wastes; but the voices had lost their singular focus and fallen into a background murmur that she couldn’t understand, and no one else could hear.

She felt very, very small, and very alone.

There was almost nothing to distract her. Whatever fragile comradery they’d forged in ShinRa’s tower, it was gone now. Barret stuck close to Tifa. Tifa hovered uncertainly between him and Cloud. Cloud alternately drifted back to walk nearer to Aerith, and then hurried to put himself back between Tifa and Sephiroth. Only Red seemed at ease. He’d already held himself somewhat apart from the group, ready to assist but still wary and aloof. They all walked in silence, eyes on Sephiroth’s cloaked back.

She wished she understood.

Even the monsters seemed to avoid their little bubble of tension. Aerith wasn’t exactly a seasoned combatant, she knew, but she could have used more fight than she got. At least when a monster came lunging after them, she could swing her staff and not feel guilty about how much of a _release_ it was.

Tension, silence, fight. Silence. Tension.

They carried on, time so stretched by their poor moods that the actual measure didn’t even matter. Everything blurred.

Only one detail stood out in Aerith’s mind. She spun her staff into the air, too frustrated to be self-conscious, and let it hang while she cast. The lightning struck, and she felt static prickle up her spine. After the last monster fell, she turned and found Sephiroth’s eyes on her, squinted with the intensity of his interest.

She spun on her heel and started walking, palms suddenly sweaty around her weapon’s grip.

 

* * *

 

Instead of a reprieve, arriving at Kalm only turned into another ordeal.

Tifa drew up short, a few hundred feet from the town. “Hey,” she said in a tiny voice. “I’m not sure we should bring _him_ into a village.”

Cloud crossed his arms, apparently giving her doubts some serious consideration.

Barret’s head fell back, as he looked to the sky and groaned in frustration. “An’ you think of that _now_ ? Dammit, Tifa, you didn’t wanna mention that, I don’ know, _when we started fuckin’ walkin’?_ ”

Aerith sighed and leaned forward onto her staff. She was thirsty, and tired, and her feet hurt more than they ever had before in her life; but that was what happened when travelling on foot, she reminded herself. It… didn’t actually help her temper much, but it did help maintain perspective. A little. “We’ve walked all this way and nothing bad has happened. ShinRa didn’t even catch us. Can’t we rest? What are you so worried about?”

Cloud and Tifa glanced at each other.

“It’s…” Tifa started.

“If you were there—" Cloud growled at the same time.

Tifa startled, and stared at him with wide eyes.

“Aerith, he’s just,” Cloud continued, oblivious to Tifa’s concerned stare. “He’s bad news. He’s dangerous, and he can’t be trusted.”

“Nothing has happened, like Aerith says,” Red spoke up. “We can hardly turn back, and you don’t have the supplies to reach another city. Either we enter, or you risk the elements, or you turn him loose.”

“Not. Happening.” Cloud scowled.

“Then we have to move, before we draw attention.” Red’s tail flicked from side to side.

“Few at a time,” Barret said. “We go in a few at a time, look less weird. Kalm ain’t exactly a hot tourist spot, but they gotta have people passin’ through enough that two or three groups won’t turn too many heads.”

“I suppose we have to,” Tifa sighed. “Alright. Aerith, Red, you go with Barret. Cloud and I will—"

Though he’d been silent and still this whole time, Aerith saw Sephiroth stand taller at Tifa’s suggestion. One of his heels worked itself into the ground, to brace or for leverage.

“No,” Aerith said. “No, I’m staying with him. You or Cloud go with Barret.”

Tifa narrowed her eyes. Aerith, out of patience, narrowed hers right back.

“If he’s so dangerous, and only you two know about it, you really shouldn’t be left alone with him. He might try something.” Or they might try something, Aerith reasoned. And that meant that either Sephiroth was exactly as vicious as they claimed, and he was going to get free and slaughter them for it; or he was truly effectively bound, and they were going to use the chance to kill a defenceless man in revenge for something they still hadn’t explained.

Red sat back on his haunches. “It doesn’t matter to me, one way or the other.”

Barret glanced one way, then the other. “Tifa,” he said, softer than Aerith had ever heard him speak before. “You come with me. Somethin’ I wanna ask you, just AVALANCHE.”

Tifa’s shoulders hunched in defeat. “...Okay.”

Cloud squared his shoulders, shifting the weight of the Buster Sword against his back. “Then you go first. Go… go do a little shopping. We’ll go straight to the inn. Meet us when you’re done.”

“What if… something happens?” Tifa stared at the ground while she spoke, scuffing a line with one of her boots.

“Then… run, okay? Away. Run away this time, Tifa.” Cloud was frowning, as serious as Aerith had ever seen him.

Tifa… looked spooked.

Barret stared at the ground a moment, eyes distant, face pensive. “Tifa, you still got your PHS?”

At first, Tifa froze up. She didn’t seem to know what to do with such a practical question. She exhaled, visibly grounding herself, and patted at the small pouch on her belt. “Mm, seems like,” she said. To be sure, she opened it up and pulled the blocky handset out. She stared at it for a bit before she pressed a button, and the screen lit up with a sickly green glow. “Still working.”

Barret fished in his pocket and pulled out a matching PHS… although his had a cute teddy bear charm dangling from it. He pressed a button and stared at the screen for a long while. Aerith shifted uncomfortably on her feet.

“Ain’t no one else for me to call on here now,” he muttered to himself. With a sigh, he held the PHS out to Cloud. “Call Tifa when you’re checked in. Make our meet-up look more convincin’ that way. …Just, uh. Try not to delete anything, alrigh’?”

Cloud accepted the offering with an unprecedented amount of grace. He cradled the PHS in both hands, and didn’t even comment on the charm. “Yeah. Stay safe.”

Tifa bit her lip. Barret nodded in farewell. Red turned his head to stare at Aerith with his one good eye. The moment passed. They turned, and headed toward the town. Silence fell. Tifa kept glancing back over her shoulder. Cloud kept the same stiff posture the entire time, until they disappeared beyond a building.

He heaved the deepest, most despairing sigh Aerith had ever heard in her life. “You really want to bring him into town?”

“No,” she said, sharp-edged with frustration. “No. I really _don’t_ want to walk into a ShinRa controlled town, dragging along a famous war hero that we’ve shot and battered and hogtied.”

Cloud scoffed and kicked at the dirt. He glanced at Sephiroth’s cloaked back, lips pursed and eyebrows drawn into a scowl, before his eyes flicked away again. “You shouldn’t have stopped us.”

Another ominous little remark, with no information to back it up. The mysteries just kept piling up. Aerith was out of trust. “Well I did, and I’m not sorry. Who… Who’s Zack Fair, Cloud? Why is Tifa so mad about him?”

Cloud shrugged. Just shrugged, like the question was silly and the answer didn’t matter. “I don’t know, some nobody. There was a kid along,” he muttered to himself. “Kind of a loser… was his name Zack?”

Sephiroth’s cloak rustled and trembled. A choked off noise escaped around the gag in his mouth. He turned his head toward them, slowly revealing his face behind the dual shrouds of his hood and his hair. His teeth were clenched on the rope. His shoulders flexed and strained. Despite the rumors to the contrary, he apparently couldn’t kill a man with merely a glance, as Cloud was still standing.

“Hm,” Aerith said. It was a tiny noise, made to cover an enormous turmoil in her heart. “I think I probably _had_ to stop you.”

“...Who’s Zack Fair, Aerith?”

Aerith started walking into town. “Who? Oh, some nobody, I guess,” she said, without looking back. She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice.

Sephiroth fell into unsteady, hobbled step next to her.

“I haven’t seen him in five years,” she whispered. “Zack. But maybe I can help.” She knew Cloud could probably hear her. What did she have left to lie about at this point? Lying was for people she wanted to like her…

Sephiroth stumbled. She turned back at the catch of his boots in the dirt, ready to do something foolish like grab at all stupid-heavy pounds of him. He didn’t need catching. He _was_ hunched over, though, near down to her eye level. His boot scraped the gravel again, and she looked down.

He’d written something in the dirt. S..S? S5? 5S? 55? The ends of the marks were abrupt and jerky, where he’d reached the literal end of his rope.

“Uh… I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” She looked to the side to avoid his eyes.

He straightened up and sighed. The sound crackled a little around the gag. His hood swayed; he was shaking his head. Aerith felt ashamed and frustrated for a moment – what help was she, at all? – but he glanced down at her. From the shape of his eyes and the tilt of his chin, she thought – maybe she just hoped – that he was trying to say, ‘don’t worry, it’s alright.’

There was a surprisingly reverberating thud, and his entire posture stiffened while his eyes narrowed. The thud was followed by a series of loud cracks, like… joints popping? Aerith stepped back, and saw Cloud scowling and rubbing his arm.

“Move,” he snapped.

Sephiroth hesitated, just long enough to make it clear to everyone that he did not take orders from _Cloud_ , but he did, eventually, move.

“Did you just… did you just pop your arm, trying to shove him?”

“It’s not funny, Aerith.” But Cloud was so sulkily insistent, and still rubbing at his shoulder.

“No, of course not.” It was _at least_ a little funny. At least. She pressed her fist to her mouth, to keep the nerves and giggles in.

They walked onward to Kalm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. A two chapter double feature, right out of the gates. After this, you should probably expect a new chapter every two weeks to a month, depending on the length. As you can see, it could be... variable. Heh.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it so far! I'd love to hear what you thought.


	3. Kalm Before the Storm

All of that stress and strife, and checking in to the inn was the easiest thing Aerith had done all week. The man watching the counter – nominally, _theoretically_ watching the counter – barely gave them a glance before he took their gil and waved them up to bed.

If he bothered to look at anyone, it was at Sephiroth – and even then, he only snorted and said, “What, _another one_? Good damn luck…”

He didn’t even seem to notice the glimpses of rope under the tarp. Cloud didn’t pause for him to get a better look, and for once Sephiroth seemed to be in complete agreement. They were already halfway up the stairs when Aerith turned back around.

“ _Another_ one?”

The innkeeper made a noise of disgust and turned his radio up louder. Excited, high speed sports-speak and the warking of many chocobos nearly drowned him out. “Ya ain’t gonna cure him. Shoulda just left ‘im by the road an’ let nature take its course, if you catch my meaning.”

“No, I _should not have_ ,” Aerith tried to insist over the race announcers. A wave of happy cheering broke out over the tinny speaker.

She gave up and headed upstairs.

It was probably best that she did. That brief distraction wasn’t enough time for much trouble to start – she hoped, she really, really, fervently hoped – but if it were, she had no backup.

She appeared to be in luck. Sephiroth, still bound and cloaked and gagged, was the first person she saw when she entered the room. He was sitting sideways on a chair facing the beds, leaning slightly into the back with his left shoulder. From the light of his eyes, she could make out his raised brows and bland expression.

He was an utter absurdity in this homey, slightly shabby place. There were wilting flowers on an end table, and skirts on the beds, and a wear path in the rug, _oh and also that dead war hero they’d taken prisoner_.

Cloud paced into her view from an alcove. She glanced at the floor. There were muddy boot tracks weaving this way and that. He’d… already covered some distance, apparently.

“Unbelievable,” he muttered to himself. “This is unbelievable.”

Sephiroth stared straight at her, comically _un_ bothered, considering the circumstances. He blinked once, slowly. Aerith was impressed. She’d never seen anyone _blink_ sarcastically before – excepting, perhaps, Tseng. ‘ _Unbelievable_ ,’ she mentally filled in for him, although in a very different tone than Cloud’s.

“Have you called Barret and Tifa?” she asked Cloud, who was making another very muddy circuit around the room.

“No.” Cloud stomped on one creaky floorboard much harder than she thought necessary.

“Are you… going to?”

Cloud continued pacing. She supposed that was _some_ sort of answer.

“Alright. I’ll just… talk to someone else.”

Cloud spun around so quickly that his heel slid in the muddy bootprints he’d left on the wooden floor. “Don’t _talk to him_!”

“Don’t tell me what to do!” Aerith snapped, without entirely meaning to. “I’m not going to just ignore this… this… _whatever_ this situation is.”

“It’s a disaster, is what it is.” And to her surprise, Cloud hid his face with both hands and heaved out one long, shaky exhale. He peeked through his fingers. His bright blue eyes flicked toward Sephiroth and away again several times, like looking at Sephiroth hurt like looking right into a lamp. “Why did _you_ have to happen _now_?” he groaned.

Aerith sighed and sat on the furthest of the beds. The mattress was hard and lumpy and _not hers_ , and she wasn’t looking forward to sleeping on it. She dropped the Sephiroth’s satchel on to the bed next to her. The junk inside it rattled.

She glanced sideways at their possibly willing prisoner. He was just a huge smudge of black and grey; bright, tired eyes under dirty hair and a dust-caked hood, and over hollow cheeks and a rope jammed in his mouth. He was probably asking himself the exact same thing as Cloud.

“Look, I—” Cloud cut himself off, and scrubbed one hand up through his wild hair. “I really don’t want to have to explain this twice. Can you please just take my word for it? This is not something you want to be tangled up in. He – the people I saw him kill…”

A silence fell over them all.

“You know, Cloud…” Aerith said, slowly, “you all killed a lot of people, too.”

Cloud shoved his hands deep in his pockets. He sighed and – finally – he leaned against the footboard of the middle bed. “Well, they were with ShinRa, so…”

“So…?” Aerith sighed as well. “So, what, it was okay because they were with ShinRa?”

“How about because they were trying to kill _us_ at the time? Is that a good enough reason?” Cloud’s voice was deadpan, and his expression was tired.

Aerith sat back down. She kicked her feet a little, and made waves in the bed skirt. “I helped with a lot of those, you know. I’m not saying my hands are the cleanest, either…”

Cloud threw his hands up in the air. “Then what are you saying?”

“The reactors… the people hurt when AVALANCHE bombed the reactors… they weren’t trying to kill anyone. Some of them didn’t even work for ShinRa. Some of them bought flowers from me…” Aerith’s voice got progressively smaller, the more she spoke.

“That didn’t bother you before…” Cloud said, although his tone was less sure than his words.

Sephiroth’s chair creaked. Cloud made a full body twitch; he blew out a tense little puff of air, and settled back on his perch not quite as relaxed as before. Aerith glanced over at Sephiroth again. He’d turned himself more toward Cloud, somehow. She didn’t know how he was even staying on the chair like that, balanced on the very edge with his legs folded under until he may as well have been kneeling.

Although… as she stared long enough, she noticed the tiny tremors shaking his limbs. His legs bent just a fraction of a degree, and he jerked backward before regaining equilibrium. _The rope_. He _couldn’t_ sit normally. And, she realized, the chair was positioned sideways so he would always have a blind spot. There was a full side of the room he could never turn himself to see.

She pressed her lips together. “You know everything that bothers me, of course.”

“You never—”

“I gave you the benefit of the doubt,” she interrupted. “I understood why you were doing it, and… the reactors _are_ bad for the planet. I’m from the slums. People die there every day, for far worse reasons than that. You have to learn to... overlook some things. Make friends where you can find them.”

“Okay,” Cloud said, impatient. “I get that. But what’s your point?”

“I’m just wondering… why I shouldn’t worry about it when you do it, but whatever he did justifies...” She looked at Sephiroth, perched and twisted and rigid. She couldn’t see his face, just hood and hair, but she thought she could picture it from the grim expression in the images ShinRa used to release. “ _This_ ,” she finished.

“We are not the same.” Cloud wasn’t angry so much as breathless and fervent, but his tone still made her lean away. “I wasn’t even… I only did it because Barret was paying. It was just a job, Aerith. Anything to make money, right? He… That was personal, and it was _sick_.”

Aerith stared at the floor, and bit the inside of her cheek. They fell into silence. She listened to Cloud breathing, and to the occasional groan from the poorly fitted joints of the old chair. She wanted to say – even after everything, a part of her _still_ wanted to say that she was sorry, that she understood; but she didn’t understand, so how could she know if she was sorry? She pulled her knees up onto the bed and hugged them to her chest.

“You should call Tifa,” she said, mostly just to fill the empty air. “She’ll be worried.”

Cloud stood, and fished for the PHS in his pocket. “...Yeah,” he agreed. He walked halfway across the room before he turned back toward her. His bright eyes were painfully earnest. “Hey. I don’t really understand what’s bothering you. I admit it. But whatever it is, _we will help_. You don’t have to turn to… him.”

“Why does that worry you so much?” she asked.

Cloud heaved a sigh. He clenched his fist around the PHS, with the silly little bear charm dangling incongruously from his tight grip. “Because… Because I’m ex-SOLDIER, and I heard you talking.”

“It just turns out we’re looking for the same person, Cloud.” That, at least, was the truth. “I’m not… _conspiring_ with him.” Aerith’s stomach did a nervous, squirming twist. She wasn’t. Was she?

“Zack… Fair, right?” Cloud tilted his head and let one shoulder sag. It was a very boyish gesture, that she was used to seeing on a very different person.

“Right. I told you about him, remember? SOLDIER First Class, Zack Fair. My first boyfriend. Are you… sure you didn’t know him?” she prodded. “There aren’t that many First Classes around, and he…” She paused, wrestling with her words. “He definitely would have been interested in someone that used a sword like his.”

Cloud shrugged. “Sorry. I…”

Sephiroth’s chair creaked again.

Cloud twitched, once, and then trailed off into silence. Aerith leaned forward. His eyes looked _weird_. Sort of unfocused and glazed, and his pupils roamed about sightlessly. It was almost like he was dreaming all of a sudden, but standing up, with his eyes open.

She jumped to her feet. “Are you… okay?”

Cloud blinked and shook his head. He seemed to snap out of it, whatever _it_ was, as quickly as it came over him. “Yeah…” he said slowly, stretching it out into two syllables. “Why wouldn’t I be? I’m sorry I don’t know your boyfriend, Aerith. But—” He jerked his chin in Sephiroth’s direction. “—If he’s looking for him, maybe it’s better he’s not found at all.”

Aerith pursed her lips. She didn’t know what to say, or who to trust. Something very strange was going on, and something was _very_ wrong with Cloud.

Cloud nodded toward the far corner of the room. “Sorry,” he repeated. “Gonna call Tifa.”

Slowly, Aerith turned back toward Sephiroth. As soon as he came into view, just at the periphery of her vision, he ducked his head and twisted away.

She threw herself back down onto the hard, uneven mattress. “Even if I _did_ ungag you, you probably wouldn’t tell me anything either,” she groused.

Cloud’s conversation with Tifa was unintelligibly hushed. That’s how she could tell it was with Tifa. No matter how she strained her ears, she couldn’t hear what was being said; and she didn’t want to draw attention to her eavesdropping by walking over.

What she could hear was the Planet. She couldn’t understand it any more than she could understand Cloud. It was like being in a room with hundreds of other people, all having their own quiet conversations at once. And through it all, the ever-present background drone, “ _not safe. help_.”

Wait…

 _Not safe_.

Well, no. Nowhere was safe now, not when she’d witnessed – almost witnessed – the murder of President Shinra, and caused an incredible amount of collateral damage escaping from Hojo’s lab. Although she hadn’t really planned that escape, and she hadn’t expected it, and she certainly hadn’t asked for it. Didn’t matter. She got it.

She linked her fingers together behind her head. No. Not safe.

 _Help_.

She pursed her lips, and let her head fall to the side so she could study Sephiroth covertly.

Whoever killed Shinra had said that they ‘would never let him have the Promised Land.’ And unless he could be in two places at once, they’d done it in the guise of Sephiroth. Palmer seemed to find it all believable, although… she really didn’t know how credible a witness Palmer was. Tifa and Cloud seemed to find it believable too, whatever that meant.

So he was a cold-blooded murderer, but he was going to protect the Planet from ShinRa?

And nothing like AVALANCHE, at all, whatsoever, _thank you very much_.

Aerith snorted.

Help.

 _Hmm_ … She kicked her feet a little; thump, thump, thump against the faded quilt.

“I’ll tell you something,” Aerith said, a quiet murmur to blend in with Cloud’s.

Sephiroth turned his head toward her without quite revealing his face.

“I am really tired. My feet hurt.”

He turned a little further, until she caught a glimpse of his hair.

“I… I just escaped being a ShinRa science experiment.”

A little further. One bright eye, glancing at her sidelong.

“This is the farthest I have ever been from home, with people I barely know.”

The chair creaked. They both paused to look at Cloud. He was not looking at them in a manner that suggested it was taking all of his willpower to do so; the man aware of the open-jawed behemoth at his back.

Aerith laid back, and continued. “My mom is probably losing her mind right now, and I’m afraid to even tell her I’m safe.”

Sephiroth had abandoned his pretense. He was openly watching her now. She’d expected the frighteningly intense… whatever it was, of before. What she got was a quiet curiosity that she wasn’t prepared for. It was half out of spite that she’d started talking at him; except she wasn’t talking _at_ him, he was listening – and not grudgingly, either.

“I… I really just stopped that fight because you mentioned Zack.”

As best he could, Sephiroth inclined his chin. Agreement? ‘Yes, I understand’?

“So… I’m not pretending to be a saint or anything, but… I took a real risk on you. And I really hope it’s worth it.”

Sephiroth’s attention took on that sharp, searching edge that drove a chill up her spine. Yet again, he studied her until she felt the need to look away.

“…So if you would not murder us all in our sleep like Cloud’s afraid of, that would be great,” she half-joked; except she couldn’t quite disguise the pleading undertone that crept into her voice. “Because my day has been rough enough already.”

The chair creaked. Sephiroth’s boot scraped against the floorboards.

Cloud turned back toward them, and grit out a tight-throated, “ _Hey!_ ”

Sephiroth’s boots scraped again. He slid off of what little seat he was on, and his knees hit the floor with a thump.

Cloud started across the room with forceful, rushed steps and a deep scowl. Tifa was audible over the PHS, demanding to know what was going on.

Sephiroth walked himself forward on his knees. With the way his arms were pulled back, he held his head unnaturally high. He stopped just at the foot of the bed Aerith had claimed and settled down onto his heels, sideways to the bed and with the wall at his back. The dust he’d stirred out of the rug swirled behind him, little sparks of light in the sun from the window.

Cloud slowed… stopped… and took a step back.

Aerith tilted her head in surprise; and only then did she consider the force a SOLDIER was capable of creating when launching themselves off the ground. They really probably should have taken those big metal plates off of his shoulders, shouldn’t they, so he couldn’t use himself as a living battering ram?

Cloud definitely thought so.

He also definitely wasn’t getting close enough to try it out.

But as Cloud backed off, the tension bled out of Sephiroth’s posture – or as much tension as he was capable of letting go. He still held himself straight-backed and with his head high. Defiant, even.

…It _was_ an act of defiance, Aerith slowly realized.

Cloud hadn’t _allowed_ him that chair, Cloud had forced it on him. He couldn’t sit in the chair without struggling and pulling, he couldn’t turn freely, it made a noise every time he moved…

He showed no signs of going any further. Apparently, he was satisfied with his new seat next to her. If Aerith turned around and laid on her stomach she’d be… well, not eye-level with him, but much closer, anyway.

“ _Cloud?!_ ” Tifa’s voice demanded, distorted over the PHS speaker.

“We’re fine!” Aerith answered for him, her voice raised loud enough to hopefully be picked up. She stared Cloud down while she spoke.

Slowly, he raised the handset back to his ear. “Yeah, sorry, Tifa, just got a little distracted…”

Aerith flipped herself around, so she could prop her chin on her hands and almost-not-quite look Sephiroth in the eye over the footboard railing.

He may be defiant, she thought, but his situation was less than dignified. That bruise on his jaw hadn’t faded – and wasn’t that curious, when a SOLDIER was supposed to fight hard and heal fast? Not only that, but the rope in his mouth had soaked through with spit, and left a dried crust down his cheeks.

If that was dry, did that mean his mouth was dry too? It must be. They’d walked such a long way, and he hadn’t been able to properly close it that whole time.

He stared back at her, far less disconcerted by her scrutiny than she was by his. It was odd. She’d expected him to be upset, for this treatment to have ruffled his pride. It wouldn’t be accurate to say he didn’t appear to care _at all_ , but…

He didn’t appear _surprised_ by this turn of events. That was it.

Beaten, shot, bound and gagged, marched without water or rest, given a non-choice between struggling to sit in a chair or kneeling on the floor like an animal… There was something Reno said to her once, that she remembered because it had seemed very strange advice to give a girl he was supposed to be covertly keeping prisoner: ‘ _anger is what happens when ya expect better from the world, and get way damn worse. So don’t stop gettin’ angry, yo_.’

Apart from his fury at the way Cloud spoke about Zack, Sephiroth was a remarkably unangered individual.

“Are you thirsty?” she asked him. She leaned a little closer, as if he was going to whisper an answer to her. Foolish. He’d barely made a noise at all since Tifa put the gag in his mouth, even though the rope could, at most, stop him from making _words_.

He blinked at her, placidly.

...No, she couldn’t see him grunting and moaning like an animal, not when witnesses might enjoy the show.

“I could get you something to drink.”

He blinked again.

“…Okay,” she said slowly. “I am going to take that as a yes.”

She stood, and pulled her dress back down where it rode up her hips. Glass of water. Where – where did she get a glass of water? This wasn’t home. She couldn’t just walk into the kitchen and get the jug. She couldn’t even walk into the kitchen and have to make tea instead, because the jug was empty and now she’d have to boil more. Was she going to have to ask? ‘Sorry, Cloud, I know you already think I’m an idiot that needs saving from myself but I’ve never stayed at an inn before and _I don’t even know how to get a drink_!’ No, she – she couldn’t, she had to, she…

Cloud held a water-spotted glass up in front of her face.

Now it was her turn to blink. She hadn’t even realized he’d hung up the PHS. She took the glass hesitantly, despite half-wishing for exactly this to happen mere moments ago.

“Bathroom is right there.” Cloud pointed. “But _do not_ ungag him.”

“How am I supposed to give a gagged man a drink of water?!” she snapped.

Cloud shrugged one shoulder. “Slowly, probably.”

Slowly. Aerith resisted the urge to cover her face with both hands. She glanced down at Sephiroth. He was still immobile, but staring up at Cloud with that same alarming sneer-grin as before.

“Slowly. Right.”

If Sephiroth wasn’t going to murder them all in their sleep before, Cloud was making a compelling case for it.

Aerith went to go fill the glass with water. She couldn’t be in the room anymore.

In the bathroom, she turned on the sink faucet. The pipes made a whining howl as water dribbled through them. Something made a ringing sort of clatter. She looked in every direction before she realized that her hand was shaking and knocking the bottom of the glass against the sink. Very carefully, she slid it onto the back by the faucet, between a chipped bud vase and a debatably clean bar of soap.

No. She closed her eyes and shook her head, and took a deep, deep breath. “Nope,” she whispered to herself. “Get it together, Aerith. No one likes a whiner.”

She cupped her hands under the faucet, and bent down to splash some water on her face. It was cooler than she expected, and smelled a lot less like dirt and metal. In Midgar, water always came out of the tap tepid and cloudy. She splashed herself again, just to enjoy the novelty of water that made her feel cleaner instead of just _less dirty_.

Somewhat refreshed, she took the glass and filled it. Then she held it up to a light. Oh. It was very clear...

“I guess you really could drink this…”

Well, she was thirsty too. Why not? She took a little sip. It tasted… hm. Cool. Cool and not at all like licking the pipes. Weird.

She returned to Cloud and Sephiroth, still absent-mindedly sipping at what she’d meant to be Sephiroth’s drink.

He tilted his head at her, as much as he could.

Oops.

While she was gone, Cloud had sat himself in the creaky old chair. He glowered at them. He’d pulled the Buster Sword off of his back, and rested the flat against the inside of one thigh. There was mud and rust spotting the blade.

Aerith bit the inside of her cheek, and focused on her self-appointed mission – although she hadn’t a clue how to accomplish it. Drowning Sephiroth or dumping water down his chest wouldn’t be much of a peace offering. Maybe… she started to kneel along with him, and immediately stopped. No. He’d be too much taller than her. Standing, then.

Carefully, she brought the glass to his lips.

Behind her, Cloud blew out a frustrated burst of air.

Sephiroth looked down toward the glass, and stuck the pink tip of his tongue out to touch the rim instead of his bottom lip. He sort of looked like one of those cross-eyed cats. She swallowed the giggle. She wasn’t going to laugh at him. Not like this.

She tilted the glass up slowly, until water was just lapping at the edge. Sephiroth’s breath fogged the glass, also slowly – far more slowly than seemed normal.

The chair creaked, and she twitched in surprise.

Sephiroth made an alarmed, _wet_ sort of noise and reared his head back so high his hood fell away.

The rope at the corners of his mouth was dark and dampened. He was breathing forcefully enough through his nose to make his chest heave. His chin was raised, exposing the long lines of his bared neck. The soft hollow spot just above his collarbones also heaved a few times, before he managed a swallow that looked more like a convulsion.

“I—I’m sorry!” She thought to reach out and help him, somehow, but she still had the glass in both hands and no idea what to do if she hadn’t.

He leaned forward. She took a jerky step back.

“I’m sorry! Let me… uh…”

She heard him take another deep breath. He sat back on his heels again, and glared past her to Cloud. She looked back over her shoulder. Cloud…

Actually, Cloud looked a lot more sheepish than she’d been expecting. “Sorry, Aerith.”

‘ _Sorry, Aerith_ ’? She wasn’t the one who’d nearly been drowned just now! Ugh, what use was she, she couldn’t even—

Sephiroth made another low noise.

She turned back to him.

He was sitting up straight again. He glanced down at the glass cupped in her hands, and then tipped his head back a little.

…He really wanted to try again, after that?

“Okay,” Aerith said slowly. “If you’re sure…”

She raised the glass to his lips again. This time, she succeeded in only allowing a trickle onto his tongue.

After a moment, he closed his eyes.

It was a slow process, but… it eased her conscience about her part in this; which was stupid, because it didn’t undo anything. So she gave him some water! That was like the very bare minimum in holding prisoners, she was pretty sure. Even ShinRa had given her water.

Sephiroth made a quiet ‘ _hnnh_ ’ sort of noise, which she barely heard.

She lowered the glass. There was still a little water in it. If she had a cloth, she could… She almost told him to ‘wait right there.’ Stupid. “I’ll be right back,” she said instead.

The washcloths in the bathroom were all a little dingy. Clean – but, a bit grey. She stood there a moment, trying to choose the best one.

“I hope you’re enjoying yourself,” Cloud said, muffled by the half-closed door.

To her surprise, Sephiroth answered. It was a very tired and indignant sounding ‘ _hnnnnh_.’

She picked a cloth. She didn’t know if it was the cleanest.

Cloud was right where she’d left him, in the chair, Buster Sword in his lap. Well, good. She’d been a little concerned that he’d… something. That he’d something.

Sephiroth was also right where she left him, kneeling on the carpet.

She dropped the washcloth on the foot of the bed and hiked her dress up to her knees with her freed hand.

“Hey,” Cloud said. “What are you—?”

“Being a least as good a jailer as ShinRa,” she answered tartly, while she crawled up onto the foot of the bed and shuffled across it on her knees, one hand holding the glass of water and one hand holding up her dress.

She sat down on – ugh, she’d forgotten, boots on the bed. She tugged them off with one hand, which required an awkward squirming almost-dance that she was sure Cloud would have laughed at in a different situation. There. She sat down on her heels, and scooted as close to the foot of the bed as she could.

“Here,” she said, while she dipped the washcloth into the remaining water. “Let me clean you up a little.”

Sephiroth sat very, very still. At the first touch of the damp cloth on his face, his eyelids fluttered rapidly.  He… had very nice eyelashes.

Aerith wiped the crusted spit from his face, and patted gently at the bruising on his jaw.

She was just wondering if she should move on to the dirt and blood dried onto his chest, when she heard heavy footsteps on the stairs.

Sephiroth opened his eyes, and froze like a statue.

Cloud heaved himself up, and swung Zack’s weapon back onto his back. The point of the Buster Sword left a scratch in the floor.

Aerith clutched the washcloth to her chest. This was the right thing. She was doing the right thing.

Barret entered the room like a broad-shouldered hurricane. “Alright, it had better damn well be story time,” he said the minute he caught Cloud’s eye. “Because you two are hidin’ somethin’ and I do _not_ appreciate it.”

“Uh,” Cloud managed.

Tifa and Red followed behind Barret, both of them moving at a stealthy slink although with very different attitudes.

Red jumped up onto the middle bed and flopped onto his side. He yawned and licked one paw.

Tifa lingered, droop-shouldered, by the far wall.

“And since Tifa has decided that she ain’t gonna tell nothin’ to nobody—” Barret plowed on.

Cloud started forward, tense and aggressive. “If she doesn’t want to talk about it, you _leave her alone_.”

“I just.” Tifa’s voice was smaller than Aerith had ever heard it before. She stopped and took a breath, and looked up with a tiny, shaky, _fake_ smile. “I just think it would be better to hear it from Cloud first, everyone all at once.”

Cloud glanced back at Sephiroth, still knelt there unnatural immobile, and utterly silent. Sephiroth stared back, with a blank face and blank eyes.

“Yeah,” Cloud sighed. “Better to just tell it once. Sit down. You want story time, Barret? Fine. I’ll tell you one of the worst stories you will ever hear.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a slow chapter this time, I know, and a stop before The Good Bits. I'm sorry. I felt very strongly that the tale of Nibelheim needed to be on its own. I also know that readers might feel very strongly about possibly a month long wait to get to that part of the story, so... that chapter is top priority right now. Don't worry, no intentions of leaving y'all hanging. Just consider this the trade-off for skipping a clip episode recap of the long stretch where nothing at all changed in Midgar.
> 
> Some of the material I cut from this chapter is over on my tumblr, if you want to see that.


	4. The Nightmare in Nibelheim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cloud tells a story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it's been two years since I posted a chapter to this. I never intended to leave it that long, but to be frank I had other things to worry about. I've had several major health issues over the last couple years. When I did have time, energy, and the ability to string a coherent thought together, there were just too many other things that needed my attention.
> 
> Added to that, my beta reader for this story was an rl friend that I'm no longer on speaking terms with. Needless to say, that quite soured the story for me, for a while. So, this chapter is very, very un-betaed. Writing without a test audience has been a much different and more difficult experience. I don't really know where to find someone else to tests drafts on, but if anyone reading this wants to volunteer, I'd appreciate it. After all, you all are the audience I'm aiming to please.
> 
> Sorry for the long wait. Sorry this chapter is unavoidably a retread of canon. I hope I can make it worth it.

“Five years ago…”

It was like Cloud’s voice was the only noise in the room. He paced along the furthest wall, back and forth and back again, full of nervous energy. Everyone watched him: Barret, arms crossed and chin up, Tifa, sort of askance, Red, who turned his head to better focus his one good eye…

Sephiroth. Sephiroth watched him too, with a disinterested, lazy air; like the slightly-too-old-for-this boy in the back at a show for children, no longer amused by or interested in silly things like puppets.

Five years ago… Aerith pulled her feet up under her, fighting a sudden chill. Five years... _‘Where is Zack, Strife?’_ What had happened? How was all of this connected – was it even connected at all? She fidgeted with her dress, smoothing it over her knees.

“No.” Cloud shook his head. He paused and turned to look at Sephiroth. A grimace crossed his features, not disgusted but hurt. “I suppose it starts earlier than that. During the war, even in tiny towns like mine, you couldn’t go long without hearing something about Sephiroth. The great SOLDIER hero. All the boys wanted to be like him… and me more than anyone. All I wanted was to be SOLDIER.”

Aerith glanced toward Tifa. She had her eyes narrowed, and the corner of her bottom lip was caught between her teeth.

“If your only dream was to be SOLDIER,” Red asked, his tail flicking lazily, “how did you end up with a group like AVALANCHE?”

Cloud sighed. He shut his eyes briefly, looking pained. “Sephiroth.”

Sephiroth leaned back, and let his shoulders hit the wall with a muted thump. For a moment, they all watched him, and he watched Cloud.

“By the time I made First Class, the war was already over.” Cloud paused, as if thinking. “Yeah.”

Aerith caught the inside of her bottom lip between her teeth. It seemed a bit odd, that a SOLDIER wouldn’t remember the date of any promotion, let alone such an important one – but Cloud _was_ a bit different, and he still didn’t look all that well. Sickness could make anyone a little scatterbrained, but…

She glanced at Tifa, who was watching Cloud intently… one of her fists was clenched. Hm. She glanced the other way, at Sephiroth. He’d let his eyes fall half-closed. The mako-light under his lashes cast strange shadows across the contours of his face.

“But there were still anti-ShinRa factions out there, and it was SOLDIER’s job to deal with them. I ended up working with Sephiroth on several missions anyway. We… I thought we were friends.”

Now everyone in the room turned to look at Sephiroth. He blinked at them, unmoved by the scrutiny.

“Yeah,” Barret said. “Real friendly reunion y’all had. Like long-lost brothers.”

Sephiroth scoffed around his gag.

“Yeah, whatever,” Cloud answered between clenched teeth. “So maybe it was more like war buddies, I don’t know. He was pretty aloof back then. Hard to have a conversation with.”

_Zack, scowling at his open PHS at the abrupt end of their date. ‘Yeah, bud, no problem, good talking to you, see ya soon—argh, this guy! Sorry, Aerith.’ A smile plastered over his hurt and annoyance. ‘Duty calls.’_

“So maybe we weren’t close. We were still...I’d have trusted him with my life, easy, even if… He never had to worry about the same.”

“Never?” Aerith asked softly. “Not even once?”

Cloud frowned. “Sephiroth? No. No way. He’s—untouchable. However strong you think a SOLDIER is, Sephiroth is a hundred times stronger than that.”

Aerith knew how strong a SOLDIER was. She’d had one around to carry things for her, one that would flex and pat his arm with an impish grin, one who scared away all her customers but made her minders keep their distance, one who ran in to defend her without a thought… And she’d seen that big, strong SOLDIER sitting on the ground and sobbing his heart out. There were a lot of ways to hurt someone – a lot of ways to trust yourself to them. No one was untouchable.

“Which is why we just beat the shit out of him,” Barret said, chin down and both brows raised. “An’ tied him up.”

“We didn’t,” Cloud insisted.

Once more, everyone in the room turned to look at Sephiroth. Still kneeling, still bruised, still all tied up.

Still very unruffled.

“We couldn’t,” Cloud insisted again, even more emphatically. “I have seen him take down dragons in just a couple hits, without getting so much as scratched. No offense, but the idea that even all of us at once could take him is…” Cloud shook his head. “He’s just playing the victim again, to get what he wants.”

Aerith shifted her seat on the bed. Her toes had started to tingle. “Playing the victim _again_? I don’t see what he could want from this.”

Cloud stared at her.

He stared at her so long, the other people in the room started fidgeting uncomfortably.

“…Alright,” he eventually said, slowly. “Fine. I… fine.” He spared a tiny glance for Tifa, who had worked her way to the far bed and was perching on the very furthest edge. “I suppose I can’t avoid it any more. I… I’m sorry, Aerith.”

He was sorry? For what?

“Five years ago, Sephiroth and I got sent on a surprise mission back to my hometown. Nibelheim.”

Everyone was intent on Cloud – almost everyone. Aerith glanced at Tifa out of the corner of her eye. Her spine was rigid, and her brows bunched together in a frown that she was clearly fighting to keep from reaching her mouth.

“I was pretty excited,” Cloud continued. “Couldn’t stay still the whole way. It drove—” He stopped, and worried his bottom lip between his teeth for a moment. “Mm. I think I annoyed Sephiroth all the way up the mountain.”

There was a noisy exhale from Sephiroth’s direction. She really didn’t need to turn and look at him to interpret it – Cloud would have to do very little to annoy him.

“It was my first trip home since joining ShinRa,” Cloud said. He stretched his arms over his head and started pacing again. He chose his path to always have Sephiroth in at least his peripheral vision, Aerith noted. “I’d just been issued some cool new materia. I kinda wanted to show off. Impress everyone. Impress… well, you know.

“It wasn’t really a routine mission for SOLDIER. ‘Deal with a broken reactor.’ That’s not what SOLDIER is trained for… although, the reactor was supposed to be causing monster activity, so maybe they had to send us in. That is where I saw him fight the dragon…”

“But you must have been helping, then,” Aerith interrupted.

Cloud stopped and turned to look at her, his head tilted inquisitively.

“With the dragon,” she clarified. “If you were on the mission with him, you must have been helping with the dragon. So he didn’t really kill it alone, did he?”

“I…” He looked off to the side, and scratched the hair above his ear with his index finger. “I mostly just watched, honestly.”

Barret snorted. Aerith and Cloud both turned to look at him. He was leaning against the wall, arms crossed. “‘Mostly jus’ watched.’ Yeah, that sounds like you.”

Cloud scowled.

“Barret,” Tifa said softly. “Let him tell the story.”

“So we got to the village,” Cloud said, voice raised over Barret’s attempt at an apology. “And Sephiroth started asking me about how it felt to be home – which was weird, because Sephiroth didn’t...” Cloud spun one raised finger through the air in a sloppy circle. “We didn’t have _conversations_. I don’t think he even listened to me most of the time.”

“He must have listened some,” Aerith mused.

Cloud tilted his head to the side. “Uh…?”

“If he was asking how it felt to be home, he must have listened at least a little bit,” she reasoned. “How else would he have known where you were from?”

Cloud made a disgusted little noise far in the back of his throat. “I don’t know, maybe he memorized my personnel file. Why does this even matter to you?”

Sephiroth heaved another sigh so forceful he may well have deflated his lungs. He shook his head, just a tiny motion that was magnified by the sway of his hair.

Aerith took a moment to just study him, with the inside of her bottom lip caught between her teeth. “Because that’s what this story is about, isn’t it? What kind of man he is? I’m just making sure I understand.”

“There’s no such thing as friends with him, and anything nice that comes out of his mouth can’t be trusted,” Cloud said flatly. “There. Now you understand.”

She understood one thing, at least; there was nothing at all Cloud seemed to like about his supposed buddy. No such thing as friends with him? That wasn’t what she’d heard before this. ...Maybe. “I guess,” she murmured.

Red’s tail thumped against the mattress. He regarded Sephiroth with his eye squinted, and his lips slightly parted. “So his behavior was a cause for concern, when you arrived?”

“I...” Cloud froze for a moment with his lips slightly parted. Finally, he shrugged and scuffed his toes across the floor. “No. Yes. Maybe? He wasn’t acting like himself. I guess that’s my point. He wasn’t acting like I expected him to, and he said some strange things. He had no home. He had no family. He had… a name. ‘My mother was Jenova. She died right after giving birth to me.’ That was what he—”

“Hey, wait—”

“ _Barret_.” Tifa sighed in frustration.

Barret put his foot down – literally. His heavy boot hit the floor loud enough to make most of them jump. “Tifa, a man’s got a right to ask some damn questions, alright?” He waited. Silence. “ _Jenova_. Wasn’t that the… freaky-ass headless monster in Hojo’s lab?”

_BANG._

Sephiroth’s shoulder hit the footboard of the bed like a close-range Bolt. The bed, with Aerith still on it, slid several inches across the floor. She clutched at her chest for a moment before she realized that he wasn’t attacking. He was up on his knees, as best he could be, and breathing so heavily that the rise and fall of his shoulders was visible.

Cloud stared at him. “You didn’t know, did you?” he asked, slow and superior.

Sephiroth made an inarticulate noise around his gag, between harsh breaths.

“Great, Barret,” Cloud said, his faint drawl increasing with the force of his sarcasm. “Now he knows where she is.”

“ _She?_ The fuck that thing’s got to do with him?” Barret demanded.

Cloud ignored Barret’s question. He walked right up to Sephiroth and tried to force him back down. One hand on his shoulder – failed. A hand on both shoulders – failed. A hand on both shoulders and a knee to somewhere in the torso – failed. (Aerith yelped an incoherent objection.) Finally, Cloud took his first two fingers and jabbed them into the soft hollow at the base of Sephiroth’s throat. For a moment, it looked like even that would fail. Aerith intended it to fail either way, because she was going to grab Cloud Strife’s arm and give him a piece of her mind.

Sephiroth, however, made a muted, probably involuntary gagging noise and slowly sank back to the floor. There was a little moisture gathered in the corners of his eyes, but they appeared glassy and unfocused for a different reason entirely. All of his attention had turned inward. He didn’t even spare a glare for Cloud as he backed away.

“Weren’t you paying attention, Barret?” Cloud asked. “Jenova. That’s his ‘mother.’ Or at least that’s what he says.”

Barret leaned to the side, to peer at Sephiroth around Cloud. “That thing’s his – I wouldn’t worry about where it is. Does he know it ain’t got a head?” He leaned a little farther. “It ain’t got a head.”

Cloud hesitated for a moment, caught somewhere between confusion and disgust. “...Yeah. When did _that_ happen?” he whispered to himself; but he shook the thought off, or perhaps shivered it away.

Sephiroth didn’t respond to their questions or their speculation. He was too caught up in staring blankly at a point somewhere through the floor, about a mile past Cloud’s feet.

“Are you going to listen now?” Cloud asked.

Barret sighed explosively. “...Yeah. ‘Cuz now I gotta know.” Although… he didn’t sound pleased with his decision. Aerith kept watching him as Cloud again resumed his pacing, and caught him mouthing what she was pretty sure was ‘but where the fuck did its head go?’

“So.” Cloud stopped and waited for an interruption that, this time at least, didn’t come. “Sephiroth’s mother is Jenova. According to him, anyway. I… well, maybe it’s true.

“He disappeared into the inn after that conversation and stayed there. I went out to see what all had changed while I was gone. Lots – and really not much. That’s how small towns are. Went looking for Tifa...”

“You looked for me?” Tifa asked. She had her arms crossed, and her shoulders hunched. Quite a change from her usual friendly body language, Aerith thought. “I… don’t remember seeing you that day.”

Cloud turned toward her, as far as he could without entirely losing sight of Sephiroth. “Yeah. I wanted to… to show you I’d made SOLDIER, just like I said. But I couldn’t find you. I guess you were busy? I went and saw Mom instead.” He rounded on Sephiroth with the fiercest glare she’d ever seen from him. “I _suppose_ I should be glad I got to see her again at all, before… _you_ happened.”

Sephiroth barely acknowledged Cloud. His brief glance upward suggested that he was being kept from something much more urgent.

“He happened? Just what the hell does that mean?” But Barret had taken on a sort of wary, closed-off air. He at least had suspicions about the answer.

 _Murderer_ – that was what Cloud and Tifa called him. _People died_ – that was what he said. Aerith pulled her hair over her shoulder and let the ends drape heavy across her lap. According to ShinRa, he had died five years ago, too. ...According to ShinRa. She twisted the ends of her hair around her fingers.

“He…” Cloud struggled for words. He paused – closed his eyes, sighed – and went to lean against the foot of the bed Tifa had claimed.

She glanced in his direction, and scooted a few inches away from him.

“We went to the reactor in the morning,” Cloud said, and held up his hand to stop Barret questioning this apparent non-sequitur. “Sephiroth hired Tifa as a guide up Mt Nibel, where it was built. Right?”

Tifa startled a bit and… actually, Aerith noted, she looked right at Sephiroth and frowned. Whatever had occupied Sephiroth’s attention, he spared enough to meet Tifa’s eyes for a moment.

Tifa shrugged. “I… guess he was the one who hired me?” She glanced off to the side. “Sorry, I don’t really remember much, except…”

“It’s fine.” Cloud reached over and rested a hand on her shoulder. “It’s not your fault.”

She went tense. He didn’t react. Maybe he didn’t notice?

“Anyway… We went up the mountain. It was a pretty uneventful trip. I don’t think I fought anything on the way to the reactor. Weird, since there’s not much other reason to send SOLDIER.” Cloud leaned forward to brace his elbows on his thighs. “The more I think about it, the less it makes sense,” he muttered. “It should have been an easy mission. It shouldn’t have gone like…”

Red’s tail thumped the mattress again. “Like what?”

Cloud snorted. “ _Bad_. In every way it could have. There’s a rope bridge that leads to the reactor – well, there _was._ We were halfway across it when it broke. We got pretty lucky, mostly. Tifa and I wound up together.”

Now Tifa was studying Cloud like he was the strangest thing she’d ever seen. “That… was pretty lucky,” she said, in a tone more like a query.

“Yeah.” Cloud patted her shoulder. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt. Well, more than a few bruises and scraped knees, anyway.”

Tifa absently ran her fingers across the side of one knee and nodded. Her expression, though, was more like she’d just been told he was going back to join the Turks.

“We were just picking ourselves up when Sephiroth came strolling around a bend in the path. One of the grunts was missing.” Cloud sighed. “I’m not sure he even cared. When we pointed it out, he just said we had to keep moving.”

Sephiroth made an indignant sort of noise from his spot on the floor. Everyone turned to look at him; Aerith, at least, was trying to disguise her own surprised start. The way he eyed Cloud – that very particular air of malicious condescension – gave her a creeping sense of deja vu. He glanced between all of them; whatever he saw on their faces, it didn’t please him. Until…

“Perhaps,” Red suggested in a carefully neutral tone, “he didn’t care to look because he already knew that one’s fate.”

Sephiroth responded with a miniscule nod, really just a fractional lowering of his chin and lashes.

“No, he probably just didn’t care because no one in SOLDIER cared about what happened to the monster feeders,” Cloud scoffed bitterly; particularly for being SOLDIER himself.

“Uh-huh. Now you see there, Tifa?” Barret cut in. “This is why _I_ hate SOLDIER. If regular ShinRa ain’t bad enough, there’s gotta be these jackasses, actin’ like everyone who ain’t been made a night-light is only good for dyin’. _Monster feeders_.”

Tifa struggled for something to say in Cloud’s defence, but clearly couldn’t find much. She made an upset, wordless little noise and knocked her heels against the footboard.

An awkward silence descended. Cloud stood abruptly, and resumed pacing his well-worn track through the room. Aerith fussed with her dress for a moment, and then turned again to Sephiroth. His expressions were subtle, for the most part, and distorted by the gag in his mouth, but they still communicated plenty. She found him staring straight at her. He blinked when their eyes met, before sliding his gaze deliberately over to Cloud and back to her. He finished with a tilt of his head.

A moment more, and she shrugged; make that, his expressions _mostly_ communicated plenty. This time, she had no idea.

Cloud cleared his throat. “Anyway. We had to go through the caves to get up,” he continued. He was too deep in his head to notice the silent conversations happening around him. “We… there was a mako fountain. Sephiroth knew a lot more than I expected about mako and materia.” He glanced at Barret. “He’s the one who told me about materia containing ‘the knowledge of the Ancients.’ At the time, I was impressed. I didn’t study much. I mostly just fought, whatever and wherever ShinRa told me to.

“We got to the reactor. That’s when things got weird…”

“What happened in there?” This time, it was Tifa who interrupted.

Cloud stopped, surprised, and turned to look at her. “Right. We had to leave you outside. ShinRa secrets.”

Tifa nodded a little. She waited patiently, apparently looking at Cloud, but… With the way they were positioned, she’d be able to see over Cloud’s shoulder – to see Sephiroth, like his reactions were as important as Cloud’s words.

Aerith looked down at the quilt on the bed. She was good at this, she knew how this worked – chin down, head tilted, lashes lowered; look meek and attentive, but thoughtful. And then, look to the side with eyes only, and watch without being caught. If Tifa was expecting something worth noticing, she was going to see it too.

“There were all sorts of pods in the reactor. I’d never seen anything like that before. They had… monsters in them. Sephiroth said Hojo made them, with mako. He – he didn’t have much that was good to say about Hojo. I guess _no one_ likes him.”

Sephiroth’s shoulders rose and fell in one tiny little movement – amusement? Maybe it was true, then. No one liked Hojo. No surprises there.

“But then… I asked about the difference between SOLDIER and monsters, if both were made with mako. And the difference between Sephiroth and SOLDIER, since he acted like there was one. He just – he just _lost it_. He started hacking at the pods—”

Sephiroth’s eyes narrowed, and the bridge of his nose scrunched up a bit. Confusion, probably.

“And bragging about how he’d always known he was different. Special.”

 _Insulted_ confusion. The reason for that wasn’t too hard to work out. _Aerith_ had always known she was different. ‘Special.’ She’d never felt like bragging about it. She’d only ever felt alone.

“One of the… things. Broke out of the pod. I guess that’s where Nibelheim’s monsters were coming from. ShinRa was making them.”

“ _Making_ them?” Barret’s outraged demand made Aerith jump. “Makin’ monsters and then letting ‘em get loose on a town mindin’ its own damn business. Fuckin’ _ShinRa_.”

“Yeah,” Cloud sighed. “Making monsters… out of people. They were people. Used to be.”

Barret’s anger rendered him speechless. He made a sharp, vaguely indecent gesture with his good hand.

In the stretch of silence, everyone could hear Tifa whisper, “But they’d been doing that for years. And everyone cheered for them.”

As one, the rest of the room glanced back toward Sephiroth.

He tilted his head at them. There was something about the economy of his movement that made it threatening. He didn’t fidget. He didn’t move without purpose. He was like…like… She glanced at Red and remembered the fear she’d felt, locked in the specimen tank with him. Like some sort of hunting _thing_ , whose interest could only bring danger. But then... Zack had been nothing like she was told a SOLDIER was, and Red was nothing like the monster he appeared to be. What did she really know about what Sephiroth was or wasn’t?

“Sephiroth disappeared after that,” Cloud continued. “At first, nobody knew where he went. We found him, eventually. There was a big old mansion in town; abandoned. People from ShinRa had lived there once – supposedly, at least. Sephiroth had gone down into the basement. There was some sort of… lab, I guess. I don’t know why he went, or how he knew it was there. I just know that that’s when he started getting… strange.” He stopped for a breath, and looked to Sephiroth with narrowed eyes. “Stranger,” he amended. “Even for him.”

 _Even for him_. A multitude of old hurts, silly half-forgotten little things, prickled under Aerith’s skin. “What was wrong?” she asked quietly.

“With Sephiroth?” Cloud shrugged. He crossed and uncrossed his arms, tucked his chin down to one shoulder. “Don’t ask me to understand him. Everything, probably.”

The prickle became an itch. She didn’t even know who she was hurting for. It just… It always stung, when the ugly parts of people took her so much by surprise.

Sephiroth stared straight ahead; unblinking, unruffled. If it was any surprise to him, he wasn’t showing it.

Cloud sighed. “The walls were lined with books. He was reading them. I tried to talk to him, but…” He shook his head. “That went on for days. Every time we peeked in, the stacks on the floor were higher and higher. The lights were always on. He was always reading. There must have been a few hundred...”

A few hundred books? What about food? What about rest? And in a ShinRa lab? A shudder forced its way up Aerith’s spine. Whatever was recorded there, she couldn’t imagine it being _good_.

“Then, one day I went down and…” Cloud trailed off into silence. He turned to stare at – no, _past_ – he stared past Aerith with despondent eyes. It was like he was trying not to see her. He squared his shoulders, despite it being mere moments before they slumped again.

“He was ranting about Jenova,” Cloud whispered. “Jenova and… the Ancients.”

Aerith leaned forward until she had to catch herself with her hands on the mattress.

Cloud turned his head to see the wall instead of her. “He said that Jenova was an Ancient that someone had found, preserved somewhere. That ShinRa had… I still don’t understand it. That ShinRa had done something with Jenova, trying to make a human with the power of the Ancients. And what they made…”

Everyone in the room leaned forward at once – almost everyone; from the corner of her eye, Aerith saw Sephiroth lean back, closer to the wall.

“...Was him,” Cloud finished.

For a moment, Aerith didn’t comprehend – and then she did, and it felt like the ground had dropped out from underneath her and taken her stomach with it. Her vision went grey and indistinct around the edges. She couldn’t tell if she was faint, or if she just didn’t care about her surroundings anymore.

ShinRa. Their obsession with the Cetra. Their obsession with her. A… a human with the power of the Ancients.

Made.

 _Made_.

The room was too hot. Much too hot. She—

She turned her head, and saw Sephiroth looking back at her.

 _Made. With the power of the Ancients_.

Everyone was staring at them, she realised in slow half-steps of thought. Everyone was staring at them, and no one was saying anything. She _was_ faint, she—

‘ _You really aren’t human, are you?_ ’

The terrifying intensity and focus of Sephiroth’s interest in her, the way he caved to her like it was nothing to him…

‘... _playing the victim again, to get what he wants._ ’

Her. It was _her_ that Cloud thought Sephiroth wanted, and he’d… he’d tried to hide it from her…

She clenched her fists tight, and clutched them to her chest, and swallowed all her feelings back down. “You weren’t going to tell me,” she whispered. “You knew and you were trying not to—”

“He kept ranting,” Cloud spoke over her, hoarse. “About the Ancients, about Jenova… About humanity. He said… he said that the Ancients died out, protecting the Planet from some sort of catastrophe; that humans ran and hid instead.”

“—Why would you try to lie to me like this? I helped you—”

“He finally left the basement.” Cloud raised his voice to further drown her out. “He said he was going to see his mother. I followed him, but—” a catch in his throat “—when I got outside, the whole village was already in flames.”

Aerith’s next demand died on the tip of her tongue. The… whole village?

Cloud and Tifa both stared at Sephiroth with narrowed eyes, their intense disgust evident in the tight set of their mouths. Barret joined them as well, with the fingers of his good hand clenched tightly around the mounting of the gun he wore in place of the other.

Red also stared, his one eye narrowed in contemplation instead. _Thump, thump, thump_ , went his tail against the mattress. “The whole village,” he said to himself in a low half-growl. “Curious.”

“Curious?” Tifa hissed. “People died, Red. Everyone – everyone died.”

“I… I know I should have chased after him right away,” Cloud said, his voice thick. “But I tried to get to my mother first. The – the house was already half collapsed. She…” He trailed off, and shook his head.

Horrible. The house had already – Aerith’s thought fizzled and popped like the fire it was about. The house had already burned and half-collapsed, in the time it took to leave a building? That seemed... No, Red was right. Even built from scrap in the slums, it took some time before a building on fire collapsed. So how?

“He went back up the mountain, to the reactor,” Cloud said. He was struggling, and failing, to keep the quaver out of his voice. “I chased after him. Tifa… Tifa’s father must have chased after him first, and Tifa after both of them.”

“Where’d you catch up to them?” Aerith asked in a shaky voice. Because he had to have, right? Tifa was sitting _right there_. She may have gotten some hits in on Sephiroth now, but five years ago she was just a kid. A kid couldn’t keep up with a SOLDIER, and certainly couldn’t…

Cloud’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I didn’t.” He shook his head, slow and forlorn. “By the time I got there, they were all already inside. And Tifa’s father was… Sephiroth killed him, and left his sword in the body. That’s what I got there just in time to see. Tifa took it, and ran further in after Sephiroth.

“She… she didn’t stand a chance. He sliced her across the chest, and threw her back down the stairs. I’m amazed she survived.”

Tifa flinched, and pressed one hand against her sternum. She let her shoulders curl until she was hunched in on herself.

“I carried her over to the side, where maybe Sephiroth wouldn’t notice her if he came back through. I wanted to do more for her, but… Someone had to stop him. So I went after Sephiroth, far into the back of the reactor. The room was labeled… ‘JENOVA’.

“It was… It was like some sort of _shrine_ in there. There was this huge metal statue, a woman with angel wings. He was talking to it. Just rambling. ‘Don’t worry, Mother, I’m here now.’ Stuff like that. He barely acknowledged me at all.

“He ripped the statue apart with his bare hands. You have no idea how strong he…” Cloud shook his head. “There was a tank behind it. Jenova.” Cloud paused, his eyes squinted in thought. “She… she had a head, though. Grey hair. Long nose. They looked alike. I thought – I thought he’d just lost it, I thought he was crazy, until I saw her in the tank. She looked like him. His Mother.

“He finally acknowledged me. He said—”

Cloud froze. He stared at Aerith. He stared at the floor.

“He said?” Red prompted.

“He said… that he was the chosen one. That he had orders to take back the Planet, for the Cetra.”

Aerith choked on the air she was trying, and failing, to breathe.

“We fought… I think. I don’t – I can’t really remember what happened. I think…” Cloud pointed at Sephiroth.

Aerith blinked. _No_ , Cloud pointed at Sephiroth’s side, where the black leather of his coat had been sheared through by something. He looked unsettled.

“…I think I did that. I don’t – there’s no way I could have won, but...”

“The papers all reported Sephiroth as killed in action,” Tifa said, soft in volume but brittle in tone. “Heroically.”

Aerith frowned. “ShinRa controls those announcements. They say whatever is convenient to them. It’s not exactly trustworthy.”

“Yeah,” Barret joined in. “Fuckin’ _heroically_.”

Aerith kept the rest of her thought to herself. _Heroically_. Well, he was ShinRa’s hero, wasn’t he? They were never going to say anything else. But she was thinking instead of dark hair and eighty-nine undelivered letters.

‘ _Where is Zack, Strife?_ ’

Dead, according to Tseng, even as he kept taking those notes from her. Killed in action. He never commented on whether or not it was heroically. But Tseng was ShinRa’s, wasn’t he?

He was never going to say anything else.

Aerith studied Sephiroth. He studied her right back.

Here was at least one SOLDIER First Class, risen from the reputed grave. Here was a man whose first words were asking after Zack, the one mystery in Aerith’s life that had never sat right with her. Here was, potentially, another Cetra, one who’d been out in the world and who must have recognized her from the start.

“I want to hear what he has to say.”

Aerith knew just crossed a line; but Cloud crossed one of his own, she reasoned. He knew of another Cetra, and he said nothing – he had every intention of _lying_ to her about it. What did he think she was going to do? What kind of person did he think she was? She just wanted to understand…

“Why?” Cloud demanded, frowning at her. “What can he possibly have to say that would change anything?”

“Why do you think I want it to change anything?” Aerith demanded herself. “Maybe I just want to know.”

“Well in my experience, nothing good has ever come from knowing _anything_ about Sephiroth. He’s a murdering lunatic. He doesn’t have anything to say that you need to hear.”

Aerith sat up as tall as she could. The first time he did this, it wasn’t endearing, but there was a naive foolishness about it that she could forgive. This time… “You don’t decide what I need to know, Cloud. I can think for myself.”

Cloud took a step backward, toward Barret.

Barret took a dainty sidestep away from him, sliding along the wall. He shook his head slightly, eyebrows raised.

“Besides,” Aerith said tartly. “ _He_ was there too. If you want to know what happened, now is your chance to find out. We have a prisoner. We are _going_ to interrogate him.”

“He’s not going to tell us anything,” Tifa said. Her tone was equally sour, if not more so. “Nothing that would help us. There’s no point. We should…” She hesitated. “We should just…”

“I would like to hear it, too,” Red said. He waited a moment, until he was sure he had everyone’s attention. “I’m sure you heard what Hojo said. I am also the last of my kind.”

“ _Sephiroth_ isn’t an endangered species,” Cloud spat. “If anything, he’s a mistake.”

Aerith couldn’t quite contain her flinch.

Red sat up on the bed and flexed his paws into the quilt. He fixed his golden eye onto her. “Whatever he is, it doesn’t matter to me. I’m asking for Aerith. If you’re going to make that choice for her, you should give her closure, at least. It’s difficult, to be alone.”

Tifa’s breath caught in her throat with a little choked gasp. Her fists were clenched and her lips were pressed in such a firm line they’d turned white in places. “Dammit.” She scrubbed at one eye with the heel of her palm. “Fine.”

“Hey, we don’t have to—” Cloud stepped up to Tifa and tried to put a hand on her shoulder, but she immediately shrugged it off.

“You came to save me before you even knew me,” Tifa said roughly, “so I guess I can do this. For you.”

Aerith tried to manage a shaky smile. “Oh, I didn’t really think you needed saving. But Cloud…”

Tifa huffed a few times, bitter little things that couldn’t quite pass as laughter. “Yeah. Just… don’t forget.” She squared her shoulders and steeled herself to approach Sephiroth, before Cloud could object again.

Sephiroth blinked up at her with a peculiar expression, all calculating curiosity.

Tifa took a deep breath before she reached to untie his makeshift gag. “I don’t think you can trust what he says, but I’ll still let you ask.”

She dropped the knotted rope on the floor at Sephiroth’s knees before she could think better of it, and stepped abruptly back. Aerith slid off the bed to step around and take her place.

In the meantime, Sephiroth tried to subtly work his jaw back into place. That bruise from earlier had spread, cutting patchy dark stripes where the rope had sat. “I’m a liar, Tifa?” he asked. There were flecks of blood across his teeth.

Tifa sucked a breath in between her clenched jaws. “ _Yes._ ”

“Hm.” He lowered both his gaze and his chin for a moment, possibly to hide his smirk.

And then the moment passed, and Aerith found those laser-bright eyes focused once more on her.

“Now,” he may as well have purred at her. “It seems I’m at your disposal.”


End file.
